It is this concern for perfection that Mr. Stanley Morison means when he says "The fine printer begins where the careful printer has left off." It is this concern with perfection that Conrad celebrated when he wrote:
"Now the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsman. Such skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honor of labor. It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and, like the higher arts, it is spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise. This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond--a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art, which _is_ art."
In dealing with the constituents of the fine book I intend no disparagement of seemly, modest, and honestly-made books to which the term "fine" is not strictly applicable. Even the humblest volume, _ad pauperum commoditatum_, may be, by virtue of its suitability to purpose and its seemliness, wholly admirable. As for the better class of trade books, the productions of university and great commercial presses, they often display qualities of design and workmanship of a high order. Though not of the first order of fineness, they represent, with gratifying frequency, what Conrad called "efficiency of a practically flawless kind." That the best of them belong, however, to a lower stratum than the truly fine book may be, I think, quite easily demonstrated. One does not have to consider the work of the Doves Press or the Bremer Presse or the finer examples of French printing of the sixteenth or eighteenth century the _ne plus ultra_ of book-making in order to recognize in them a quality (mark the word) which the trade edition, however charming, never does and never can attain. By reason of this quality--the quality of fineness--they are _different_ from trade books, whether or not they are _superior_ must remain for each of us a question of personal values. Since that is true, let us now--having cleared the ground and removed perhaps the possibility of a misapprehension with regard to the title of this paper--consider the values and the physical constituents of the fine book.