Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/48

38 deteriorated. At first only one side was written on, the back being frequently stained. Parchments written on both sides are called by Pliny opisthograpln. The term ooc-fell is found, in early English, to designate this material. Its dearness in classical times led to the practice of erasing the original writing for the purpose of substituting new. Parchments so obliterated are known as palimpsests, from a Greek word signifying twice rubbed, or prepared for writing ; and they are alluded to under that name by Cicero (adDiv. vii. 18). Paper made from cotton (charta bombycina] came into use, according to Montfaucon, towards the end of the 9th or the beginning of the 10th century; and the in vention was opportune, as it checked the further use of palimpsests, which, from the scarcity of parchment and the demand for books of devotion, had imperilled the preserva tion of much classical literature. Cicero s De Republica was discovered by Angelo Mai in the Vatican library written under a commentary of St Augustine on the Psalms; and the Institutions of Gaius, in the library of the chapter at Verona, were deciphered in like manner under the works of St Jerome. But the invention of linen paper gave the first real impulse to book production. The precise date of this invention is disputed; Mabillon refers it to the 12th century. Montfaucon, however, found no specimens earlier than!270, and Maffei none before 1300 ; the most numerous of them belong to the 14th century. Scaliger ascribes the invention to the Germans, Maffei to the Italians, and others to certain Greek refugees at Basel; while Duhalde refers it to the Chinese, and Prideaux to the Saracens in Spain. For further particulars respecting the various substances of early books, the reader may consult the first volume of the Nouveau traite de diplomatique, by the Benedictines of St Maur, and the Essai sur Vhistoire du Parchemm et du Vclin, by Peignot, who has given a list of authorities on this subject.

The form of ancient books differed with the materials of which they were composed. When flexible matter came into use, it was found convenient to make books in the form of rolls, and the two names are synonymous in legal phraseology to this day. The papyrus, and after wards the parchment, was joined together to form one sheet, and then rolled upon a staff into a volume (volumeii). When an author divided his work into portions or &quot; books,&quot; in the literary sense of the word, each division was usually a volumcn by itself, thus Ovid speaks of his fifteen books of the Metamorphoses as so many volumina ; and the same was done when an entire work was too bulky to be rolled on one stick. The staff in the Herculaneum rolls is con cealed by the papyrus, but it usually projected, the ends being ornamented with bosses (innbilici) of wood and ivory. The title (titidus index) was either suspended like a ticket to the roll, or pasted on the outside. These rolls were frequently protected by a parchment cover ; they were deposited in a cylindrical box (capsa or scrinium), or were arranged horizontally in cases round the walls of a library, as at Herculaneum. Many books could probably be stowed away in small compass by this means ; and the smallness of the rooms devoted in ancient times to such collections is readily explained in this manner. The volumen, however, in most cases, was far from containing as much as our ordinary books, even in an octavo form. The square form, Form now originally applied to the codices or wax tablets joined uaed. together in the way described above, was resorted to afterwards for separate leaves, the same name being re tained with altered materials. Martial speaks of this later kind of codex as a novelty in his day. It was com mon, however, in Greek MSS., among the earliest of which Montfaucon discovered few specimens of rolls. The term liber in the 4th century is found applied to both rolls and squared leaves, but the former were discontinued in the Middle Ages, and covers of boards were gradually intro duced, the leaves being stitched together as well as folded.

The internal arrangement of books has undergone many modifications, which belong, however, chiefly to the subject of early writing. At first the letters were divided rrj only into lines, then into separate words, and these by degrees were noted with accents, and distributed by points and stops into periods, paragraphs, chapters, and other divisions. In some countries, as among the Orientals, the direction of the characters was from right to left, in others, as among the Northern and Western nations, from left to right. The early Greeks followed the two directions alter nately, a method which was called boustropJiedon, from its analogy to the path of oxen when ploughing. In most countries the lines run from side to side, but in some, parti cularly among the Chinese, their direction is vertical. The diffusion of early books concerns especially the literary historian. Their scarcity before printing is illus trated by the conditions attached to purchase or loan ; but it must be remembered that a particular book might easily bear a monopoly price, and that this is no test of the cost of those which might be multiplied by transcription. When, however, the small number of copyists in the Dark Ages aud even later is considered, the high prices recorded in many instances do not appear surprising. A curious collection of scattered notices of this kind is given in the first volume of Warton s History of English Poetry. A catalogue of the books in the Sorbonne in 1292, consisting of upwards of 1000 volumes, is mentioned by Chevillier as having been valued at 3812 livres, equiva lent, according to an English writer, to as many pounds sterling of the present day. In 1425, when the English became masters of Paris, the duke of Bedford, regent of France, sent the whole of the royal library into England ; and the collection, which amounted to only 853 volumes, was valued at 2223 livres.

The characteristics of early printed books are noticed under the head of (q. v.) The folio and books, quarto sizes, originally adopted from the largeness of the types in the infancy of printing, are now generally restricted to works of bulk, as dictionaries and other books of reference. The size of a printed book is named from the dimensions of the paper and the number of leaves into which it is folded. The ordinary sizes for a long time were royal, demy, and crown ; and the demy 8vo is now the commonest size in use. Post and foolscap are frequently but inaccurately described in catalogues as duodecimo. &quot;Paper-moulds,&quot; says Mr W. Blades, a competent authority on this subject, &quot; have fixed conventional sizes ; but since the introduction of machines for making paper, and tli3 consequent disuse of moulds, makers work more by a given number of inches than by names of sizes. Consequently, the correct description of book sizes has become impossible, and the trade describe the new by the names of the old size they most resemble. To determine the real size of a bound book,&quot; he adds, &quot;find the signature (a letter or figure at the bottom of the page), and count the leaves (not pages) to the next. A further test is the binder s thread in the middle of the sheet; the number of leaves from each thread to the next will give the same result. But these rules do not apply to old black-letter books and those of the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the most satis factory test is the water-mark. The rule is : a folio volume will have all the water-marks in the middle of the page ; a quarto has the water-mark folded in half in the back of the book, still midway between the top and bottom; in an octavo it is at the back, but at the top, and. often 