Books cannot live long without being bound, and the more expensive and artistic the appearance of the binding, the greater the chance of preservation for the whole. A book is sometimes handled gently, not because of any merits of its own, but simply on account of its cover, which thus becomes its protector in a double sense. Like those old earthen boxes, which on being broken are found to contain the clay tablets of Assyria, many of which run as far back as 1500 years before the Christian era, bindings were doubtless originally intended to act the part of preservatives; beauty of design and even neatness would be after-considerations, and entirely subservient to the sole object, that of protection. By degrees the book lover made demands upon art, and, in obedience to an universal law, the supply answered to his call. Cicero, we are told, was a connoisseur of bindings, and himself employed famous workmen to glorify his rolls of papyrus and vellum, or to bind up his diptychs in the manner of our modern books, but more expensively, if the tastes of the old Roman are not belied, than the majority of book lovers can afford to do in these latter days.
In the palmy days of Rome, art in all its varied forms was probably as advanced as it is now, and we cannot doubt that Virgil and Homer, the representative poets of Rome and Greece, were to be found in a score of palaces, dressed as befitted their high reputation, in the most noble and expensive of coverings. Two thousand years have, however, made a clean sweep of Roman artist and Roman bookman alike, and we have nothing to guide us beyond the casual remarks of one or two diarists and historians of the day, whose chronicles have happened, almost by chance, to come down to us. The names of none of the ancient binders survive, and not a trace of their workmanship remains; we know only that there were such beings, who occasionally threw into their work great taste and skill, and that bibliophiles vied with each other in gaining possession of their choicest examples.
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 Dagæus 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.