main open at any page, the back flexible and the leaves evenly cut. The gilding and other ornaments may be left to the artist, but the inscription of the title is a very serious matter, as found to his discomfiture the owner of a work of Lucian, translated by a M. Belin de Balu, which the great Bozerian lettered: “Lucien T. P. Belin de Balu.” T. P.=traduit par. Not less unfortunate was the bibliophile whose uncut, scarce edition of the works of Brantôme, confided to an artistic but dreadfully provincial bookbinder, was returned with the leaves scrupulously cut, and the volumes inscribed: Bran Tome I., Bran Tome II., Bran Tome III., and so on to the ninth volume. And Dibdin relates, among anecdotes of barbarous titles applied to precious works, the discovery by a well-educated bibliomaniac of the first and almost unknown edition of the “Decameron” of Boccaccio, in a volume entitled “Concilium Tridenti.”
As to the expression of the binding of a bool, it should be sad or gay, sombre or brilliant, in accord with its spirit, its tone and its epoch, as is suggested by Hartley Coleridge. Didot even insisted upon a refinement in the matter of color, advising chromo bibliotacts, as they are aptly styled by Uzanne, to
