As I have said, there is nothing final or absolute in Design. It is a matter of continual re-arrangement, re-adjustment, and modification or even transformation of certain elements. A kind of imaginative chemistry of forms, masses, lines, and quantities, continually evolving new combinations. But each artistic problem must be solved on its merits, and as each one varies and presents fresh questions, it follows that no absolute rules or principles can be laid down to fit particular cases, although as the result of, and evolved out of, practice, certain general guiding principles are valuable, as charts and compasses by which the designer can to a certain extent direct his course. To begin with, the enormous variety in style, aim, and size of books, makes the application of definite principles difficult. One must narrow the problem down to a particular book, of a given character and size. Apart from the necessarily entirely personal and individual questions of selection of subject, motive, feeling or sentiment, consider the conditions of the book-page. Take an octavo page--such as one of those of this volume. Although we may take the open book with the double-columns as the page proper, in treating a book for illustration, we shall be called upon sometimes to treat them as single pages. But whether single or double, each has its limits in the mass of type forming the full page or column which gives the dimensions of the designer's panel. The whole or any part of this panel may be occupied by design, and one principle of procedure in the ornamental treatment of a book is to consider any of the territory not occupied by the type as a fair field for accompanying or terminating design--as, for instance, at the ends of chapters, where more or less of the type page is left blank. Unless we are designing our own type, or drawing our lettering as a part of the design, the character and form of the type will give us a sort of gauge of degree, or key, to start with, as to the force of the black and white effect of our accompanying designs and ornaments. For instance, one would generally avoid using heavy blacks and thick lines with a light open kind of type, or light open work with very heavy type. (Even here one must qualify, however, since light open pen-work has a fine and rich effect with black letters sometimes.) [Illustration: WALTER CRANE. FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] [Illustration: WALTER CRANE. FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] [Illustration: WALTER CRANE. FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] My own feeling--and designing must always finally be a question of individual feeling--is rather to acknowledge the rectangular character of the type page in the shape of the design; even in a vignette, by making certain lines extend to the limits, so as to convey a feeling of rectangular control and compactness, as in the tail-piece given here from "The Faerie Queene."