an ancient waxed Table-book. 11 
appears to have constituted their value and curiosity, and the poet dwells on this 
circumstance minutely. These lines are worth quoting, because they prove, if I 
mistake not, that the tablets of the poetical abbot were very nearly identical in 
size with those which form the subject of this paper. Addressing the tablets, 
he says : 
“In latum versus vix octo pagina vestra 
In longum vero vix capit hexametrum 
Attamen in vobis pariter sunt octo tabelle, 
Que dant bis geminas paginulasque decem. 
Cera namque carent altrinsecus exteriores ; 
Sic faciunt octo quatuor atque decem. 
Sic bis sex capiunt et carmina centum 
Id quoque multiplices paginule faciunt.” 
Mabillon has evidently misunderstood the second of these verses, when he 
tells us that the tablets of the abbot Baldric are here described as being nearly 
half a foot long ; for the words 
“In longum vero vix capit hexametrum,” 
signify, not that the page was six metres, or inches, long, but that it was barely 
long enough to hold an hexameter verse ; and this is interesting, because it shews 
incidentally that the tablets were then written upon exactly as ours have been, 
namely, not across, but lengthwise, the lines running parallel to the longer side. 
That this is the true signification of the line, and that the word hexametrum 
means an hexameter verse, is evident from the first line, which describes the 
breadth of the tablets by the number of verses which a page can contain: 
“Tn latum versus vix octo pagina vestra,” ke. 
The abbot Baudri was therefore speaking of verses, and, consequently, must have 
meant an hexameter verse, and not a measure of length, by the word hevametrum. 
It follows that the abbot’s tablets were about three, or, at most, four inches 
long; and as each page could contain but eight verses, the leaf was probably 
about two inches broad. 
He tells us also that there were eight leaves in the book, making fourteen 
waxed pages for writing, the external pages of the first and last leaf being left 
b2 
