What Maioli appears to have been among Italian book-collectors, Jean Grolier, Vicomte d'Aguisy, was among French bibliophiles. He held for a time the post of Treasurer of the Duchy of Milan, and while in Italy he collected books for his library and made the acquaintance of Aldus Manutius. Many of the Aldine books are dedicated to him, for Aldus occasionally stood in need of financial aid and found in Grolier a generous and practical patron of literature. Some of the famous bindings which distinguish Grolier's books were executed in Italy, others in France, where Italian bookbinders were then teaching their art to the native workmen. They display the same style of design that decorates the books of Maioli, and Maioli's benevolent inscription too, Grolier adapted to his own use, and stamped upon certain of his books IO. GROLIERII ET AMICORVM. The exact signification of these words is obscure. At first sight they might appear to refer delicately to the joy with which the owner of the book would place it at the disposal of his friends, but this does not accord with what is known of the character of book-lovers. Perhaps their only meaning is that Maioli and Grolier were at all times ready to please their friends and to gratify themselves by exhibiting their treasures. But since several copies of the same work are known to have been bound for Grolier--for instance, five copies of the Aldine Virgil--it has been suggested that he occasionally made presents of his books, though he drew the line at lending them. Grolier's copy of the _De Medicina_ of Celsus, which is in the British Museum, is bound in a somewhat different style from that usually associated with his name. It is in brown leather; blind-tooled except for some gold and coloured roundels in different parts of the device. In the centre of both covers is a medallion in colours, that on the upper cover representing Curtius leaping into the abyss in the Forum, and that on the lower cover representing the defence of the bridge by Horatius. This is an Italian binding. Although it was Italy who first improved upon the usual methods of mediæval binding, and from her that France took lessons in this new and better way of clothing books, it was France who was destined to bring the art to its highest excellence. Having learned her lesson, she perfected herself in it, and the workmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Geoffroy Tory, Nicholas, Clovis, and Robert Eve, and Le Gascon, carried French bookbinding into the very first rank, where it may be considered to remain to this day.