The restorer, or the Father, (if you prefer this latter appellative) of modern Book-binding in France, was the Elder Bozerian:  of whose productions the book-amateurs of Paris are enthusiastically fond.  Bozerian undoubtedly had his merits;[151] but he was fond of gilt tooling to excess.  His ornaments are too minute and too profuse; and moreover, occasionally, very unskilfully worked.  His choice of morocco is not always to my taste; while his joints are neither carefully measured, nor do they play easily; and his linings are often gaudy to excess.  He is however hailed as the legitimate restorer of that taste in binding, which delighted the purchasers in the Augustan age of book-collecting.  One merit must not be denied him:  his boards are usually square, and well measured.  His volumes open well, and are beaten ... too unmercifully.  It is the reigning error of French binders.  They think they can never beat a book sufficiently.  They exercise a tyranny over the leaves, as bad as that of eastern despots over their prostrate slaves.  Let them look a little into the bindings of those volumes before described by me, in the lower regions of the Royal Library[152]—­and hence learn, that, to hear the leases crackle as they are turned over, produces nearly as much comfort to the thorough-bred collector, as does the prattling of the first infant to the doating parent.

THOUVENIN[153] and SIMIER are now the morning and evening stars in the bibliopegistic hemisphere.  Of these, Thouvenin makes a higher circle in the heavens; but Simier shines with no very despicable lustre.  Their work is good, substantial, and pretty nearly in the same taste.  The folio Psalter of 1502, (I think) in the Royal Library, is considered to be the ne plus ultra of modern book-binding at Paris; and, if I mistake not, Thouvenin is the artist in whose charcoal furnace, the tools, which produced this echantillon, were heated.  I have no hesitation in saying, that, considered as an extraordinary specimen of art, it is a failure.  The ornaments are common place; the lining is decidedly bad; and there is a clumsiness of finish throughout the whole.  The head-bands—­as indeed are those of Bozerian—­are clumsily managed:  and I may say that it exhibits a manifest inferiority even to the productions of Mackinlay, Hering, Clarke, and Fairbairn.  Indeed either of these artists would greatly eclipse it.  I learn that Thouvenin keeps books in his possession as long as does a certain binder with us—–­ who just now shall be nameless.  Of course Charles Lewis would smile complacently if you talked to him about rivalling such a performance![154]