Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/26

 thing else. A long time elapsed before the characteristics of a book became matter of settled convention. At first there were no title-pages; all the description came at the end; and a word or two after the publisher's preface, if any, such as, "Joannis de sacrobusto anglici viri clarissimi Spera mundi feliciter incipit," was the reader's introduction to his subject. Afterwards, very short fly-titles or half-titles, as they are now called, were introduced in a blank leaf. Thus in one book we have, "Ad inveniendum novam lunam et festa mobilia. Liber perutilis;" in another we have, "Questo e ellibro cbe tracta di mercatantie et uzanze de paesi." As regular title-pages were introduced, the full descriptions at the end still being generally retained, the publishers seem to have frequently made use of them as a kind of advertisement prefixed to the book, of which then were hardly yet considered as a part: just as, in our time, we do not consider the lettering at the back as part of the book. Hence, when a stock of any book came into the hands of a bookseller who was not the original publisher, be frequently printed a new title-page to [15] attract attention to the place of deposit, the original place, date, &c., being still to be read at the end. But the same practice continued when the colophon, or final description, fell into disuse, and the practice then ceased to have any justification, since the title-page had become the principal direct means of identifying the book. And thus it happens that, in all time, difficulties occur with titles. Nor do we see any hope of their final disappearance, as to books yet to be published; unless indeed an increased taste for bibliography should direct opinion against the following practices.

First, new titles are frequently printed, with new dates, sometimes with, and sometimes without, the words second edition. Sometimes the words revised and augmented are added without any change whatever in the book. An author may thus lose his pri-