If we except, perhaps, the French emigrants who made their home in this country at the end of the eighteenth century, there really was no binder of any note until the advent of Roger Payne (1739-1797). This workman, though dissolute, had, nevertheless, a reputation in his line second to none. In person, he is stated to have been dirty and untidy, but certainly neither of these defects appear in his bindings, which, though not, as a rule, heavily gilt, are tooled to neat classical or geometrical designs after the Venetian style. Where Payne made his mark was, perhaps, in the _appropriateness_ of his bindings. His judgment, in this respect, appears to have been sound and popular. After Payne followed Walther, Charles Hering, and Charles Lewis, all of whom, the last particularly, did very good work. In more recent times still we have Hayday, Riviere, Francis Bedford, Ramage, and last, but by no means least, Zaehnsdorf, whose son yet carries on business in London. The ordinary cloth bindings, such as we see every day in the booksellers' shops, are purely English, and have been in use since 1823, when they were invented by Lawson, and adopted by Pickering, the publisher. In Continental countries they use paper covers, and even the most expensive works are issued originally in this form. There they bind their books after publication if they are found to be worth binding. In this country cloth is now largely used, and is certainly a great improvement on the old clumsy covers of a bygone age, or on the paper wrappers of this. Bookbinding in the higher styles is now done fairly well in England, though, in the opinion of many, the workmanship is not equal to that of the French artists of three hundred years ago. FOOTNOTES: [12] See Guigard, _Armorial du Bibliophile_, vol. i. p. 248. [13] Mr. Quaritch, the bookseller, has in preparation a _Dictionary of English Book Collectors_, somewhat after the scheme of M. Guigard's book. CHAPTER XI. BOOKS TO BUY. One of the most difficult branches of bibliography is that which treats of the books to choose and those to avoid, with reference mainly to their pecuniary value. Few collectors, who are not specialists, care very much for the utility of their libraries; in many cases, indeed, it is not a question of utility at all, but of extent, though I apprehend that no one would wish to crowd his shelves with rubbish merely for the sake of filling them. As an immense proportion of the books which have been published during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries clearly come under that category, the collector has much to avoid, and stands in need of considerable experience to enable him to make a selection.