Historical Sketch of Bookbinding. By S. T. Prideaux. (Lawrence and
Bullen.)—Mr. Prideaux gives a very circumstantial account of bookbinding and the several masters of that most delightful of crafts. It is not too long, nor is it too compressed ; he has space to note all the changes, when different tools were introduced, who were the chief patrons, and when decadence set in. One point he insists upon which collectors have not yet understood, and that is that, owing to the scarcity of books, oven in the golden days of binding, compared to the thirst for polite literature, they passed through several hands, and had many bindings given them. What has become of the contents of many famous libraries is a puzzle to the student, who scarcely likes to believe they were destroyed by neglect ; yet the vicissitudes of the survivors ought to be a suffi- cient guide, one would think. Interlaced initials are over a fertile cause of dispute. It seems a pity that such a trivial habit should render identification difficult, which otherwise would have been so easy.
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