108 ENGLISH BINDING AND BINDERS,

arose from tlie limited number of copiesprinted, andtheconsequent value of them to the possessors. The folioand the quarto were the usual sizes, which from theirbreadth afforded ample room for the display of what-ever taste the ingenuity of the binder might suggest;and from the specimens which have been given ofthe embellishment of their side covers, it is evidentthat they were no mean artists. The multiplicationof books, it has been'seen, led to a less expensivemode of binding, though still retaining much orna-mental beauty. This may be pronounced the stylepeculiar to the sixteenth century. In the whole ofthe bindings of this period, a minute care attendedevery operation required. The workmen, or perhapsthe printers, whom it has been shown, were also thebinders of their works, appear to have been desirousto thus preserve them to posterity. They are foldedwith an anxious care for the evenness and integrityof the margins, and it is rare that any transpositionsof sheets are found. To guard against this, in theinfancy of printing, they had a Registrum Chartarum ,for the convenience of the binder, of the signaturesand first words of the sheets. About 1469—70, al-phabetical tables of the first words of each chapterwere also introduced as a guide to the binder. Thename and place of the inventor of signatures is notknown; they appear in an edition of Terence, printedat Milan, in 1470, and were introduced by Caxton in1480. The Abb6 Reve ascribes the discovery to