When, therefore, the question is asked, Who was the first binder known to fame? we cannot look to Greece or to Rome for an answer, nor yet to Italy. Curiously enough it is to Ireland that we must turn, for there the monk Dagaeus practised the art so long ago as 520 A.D. One example only of his handiwork has survived to our own day, and is now to be found in the library of the British Museum along with the _Textus Sanctus Cuthberti_ bound by the first English workman, one Bilfred, a monk of Durham, who flourished nearly 1200 years ago. This _Textus_, so the old legend says, was once swallowed up by the sea, which, respectful of the merits of the saint, gracefully retired fully three miles of its own accord, and so restored the cherished volume to its owners. As the monks were the sole multipliers of books, so also they were, until the invention of printing in 1450, the only binders. Manuscripts of the ninth century are extant, heavily encased in ivory-carved covers or confined between gold and silver plates studded with precious stones. More often than not these expensive coverings were destined to be their ruin, for, to say nothing of private peculation, the sumptuous bindings were ripped off at the time of the Reformation for the sake of the metal or stones, and the manuscripts thrown in thousands upon the tender mercies of the vandals into whose hands they fell. In the fourteenth century Petrarch was knocked down by one of his own tomes, and was within an ace of breaking his leg, but this was at a period when monastic bindings ordinarily consisted of wood, covered with leather and protected by metallic bosses, corner plates, and massive clasps of iron. Bulk and weight were then the great desiderata, though every now and then the richest materials were still employed in binding, as when a king's library was added to, or some rich monastery gave orders for a sacred volume to be covered with the enamels of Limoges, ivory, gold or silver, and encrusted with jewels. From the end of the fifth to the middle of the fifteenth century, books were excessively rare and costly, and comparatively few bindings illustrative of the art during the dark ages have been preserved. The few that have survived are wonderful specimens of art, and in every way worthy of the illuminated manuscripts they enclose. The period of the Renaissance, which is usually assigned to the Pontificate of Leo X., was witness of another change. The ponderous tomes, whose weight was alone a protection, gradually gave way to smaller-sized volumes, and these were often bound in velvet or silk, beautifully embroidered by lady amateurs, perhaps also by professed binders. At other times the monastic covering of wood and leather is observable, and often the leather gave way to seal and shark skin without any tooling or other ornamentation.