e
author. You must take the greatest care, dear Francis, to present it to
the public in an accurate shape, and this indeed I must beg and implore.
I want beauty and refinement besides; but this we shall get from your
choice paper, unworn type, and breadth of margin. In a word, I want to
have it in the same style as your "Politian." If all this extra luxury
should put you to loss, I will make it good. I am most anxious that
the manuscript should be followed exactly, without any change or
addition; and so, my dear Francis, fare you well.' The book appeared with
a dedication to Grolier himself, in which Francis of Asola recounts the
many favours received by the elder Aldus in his lifetime, by himself, and
by his father Andreas. The presentation copy was magnificently printed on
vellum, with initials in gold and colours. Grolier inscribed it with his
name and device, so that it became easy to verify its subsequent history.
It appeared among the books of the Prince de Soubise, and belonged
afterwards to the Count Macarthy, and in 1815 was bought by Mr. Payne and
transferred to the Althorp Library.

[Illustration: BINDING EXECUTED FOR GROLIER.]

Grolier's books were generally stamped with the words '_et Amicorum_'
immediately after his name, to indicate as we suppose that they were the
common property of himself and his friends, although it has been
suggested that he was referring to his possession of duplicates. Another
of his marks was the use of some pious phrase, such as a wish that his
portion might be in 'the land of the living,' which was either printed on
the cover or written on a fly-leaf, if the volume were the gift of a
friend. In the use of these distinctions he seems to have been preceded
by Thomas Maioli, a book-collector of a family residing at Asti, of whom
very little is known apart from his ownership of books in magnificent
bindings. Grolier may have borrowed the phrase about his friends from a
celebrated Flemish collector called Marcus Laurinus, or Mark Lauwrin of
Watervliet, who was in constant correspondence with the Treasurer about
their cabinets of medals and coins. Rabelais had a few valuable books,
which he stamped with a similar design in Greek, and the Latin form
occurs in many other libraries. We are inclined to refer the origin of
the practice to a letter written by Philelpho in 1427, in which he tells
his correspondent of the Greek proverb that all things are common among
friends.

Grolier's l