BOOK. 



663 



Book, are informed, that the Rabbis, who were particularly 

 " t/ -' anxious for the purity of the sacred text, knew the 

 exact number of letters which a book contained. 

 The inconvenience of this mode of writing suggested 

 the division of letters into separate words ; and the 

 love of precision, by degrees introduced the practice 

 of noting these words with accents, and distributing 

 them, by different points and marks, into periods, pa- 

 ragraphs, sections, and chapters. In Hebrew, and 

 other oriental books, the lines run from right to left ; 

 the Northern and Western nations write from left to 

 right ; the Greeks followed both directions alternate- 

 ly, going in the one, and returning in the other ; in 

 Chinese books, the Hues run from top to bottom. 

 The conclusion of a book was anciently marked with 

 a figure -^ , called coronis ; and the whole book was 

 sometimes washed with cedar oil, or strewed between 

 the leaves with citron chips, to prevent it from rot- 

 ting. Certain formulas were occasionally used at the. 

 beginning and end of books ; thus we find, at the 

 end of the books of Lxodus, Lc-citicus, Numbers, 

 Ezekiel, the word p*n, be courageous, as if to ex- 

 hort the reader to persevere, and proceed to the fol- 

 lowing book. Books were often guarded, likewise, 

 at the conclusion, with imprecations against such as 

 should falsify them ; as we find in the Apocalypse. 

 It is with a similar view that the Mahometans place 

 at the beginning of all their books the name of God, 

 which is regarded with such profound reverence, as 

 to afford the most certain protection to every thing 

 on which it appears. 

 Scarcity Before the invention of printing, and of the manu- 



of books facture of paper from linen, books were so scarce 

 before i he an( j fear, as to be without the reach of all but per- 

 ofDriiit- 8ons ^ cons ''lerable opulence. Though the materials 

 iug. f which they were made had been as cheap and as 



plentiful as paper is at present, the labour of multi- 

 plying copies in manuscript would always have kept 

 their numbers comparatively scanty, and their price 

 high. Hence, in all the nations of antiquity, learning 

 was almost exclusively confined to people of rank j 

 and the lower orders were only rescued from the 

 darkness of total ignorance, by the reflected light of 

 their superiors, and raised" above the rudeness of bar- 

 barism, by that partial improvement which men of 

 cultivation and refinement necessarily impart, in a 

 greater or less degree, to all within the sphere of 

 their influence. The papyrus being the cheapest 

 material for writing, was, of course, in most general 

 use. But when the Saracens had conquered Egypt, 

 in the seventh century, and the connection between 

 that country and Europe was entirely broken off, 

 the papyrus could no longer be procured, and books, 

 already sufficiently rare, became now almost unattain- 

 able. Parchment, the only substance for writing 

 which then remained, was so difficult to be procured, 

 that it was customary to erase the writing of ancient 

 manuscripts, to make room for some other composi- 

 tion. In this manner, many of the best works of an- 

 tiquity were lost for ever j the noblest effusions of 

 Cicero, or Virgil, might be exchanged for the bar- 

 barous jargon of a monkish declaimer ; and the ele- 

 gant and instructive narrations of Livy and Tacitus 

 might be lost, for the superstitious detail of pretended 

 miracles, or the legendary story of a saint. History 



records many facts which place in a very striking Book, 

 light the scarcity, and consequent value, of books, ' i" "' 

 during the dark ages. Private persons seldom pos- 

 sessed any books at all ; and even distinguished mo- 

 nasteries could, in general, boast of no more than a 

 single missal. Towards the end of the seventh cen- 

 tury, even the papal library at Rome was so poorly 

 supplied with books, that Pope St Martin requested 

 Sanctamand, bishop of Maestricht, to supply this de- 

 fect, if possible, from the remotest parts of Germany. 

 Nearly two centuries after, Lupus, abbot of Fer- 

 rieres, in France, sent two of his monks to Pope Be- 

 nedict III. to beg a copy of Cicero de Oratore, and 

 Ouintilian's Institutes ; " for," says the abbot, " al- 

 though we have part of these books, there is no 

 complete copy of them in all France." John de 

 Pontissara, bishop of Winchester, on borrowing from 

 his cathedral convent of St Swithins, at Winchester, 

 (in 1299) a Bible' with marginal annotations, in two 

 folio volumes, gave a bond for the return of it, drawn 

 up with great solemnity. For the bequest of this 

 Bible, along with 100 marks, the monks were so 

 grateful, that they appointed a daily mass to be said 

 for the soul of the donor. To present a book to a 

 religious house, was thought so valuable a donation 

 as to merit eternal salvation ; and it was offered on 

 the altar with great ceremony. Books were some- 

 times given to monasteries, on the condition that the 

 donor should have the use of them for life ; and 

 sometimes to private persons, with the special in- 

 junction, that they who received them should pray 

 lor the souls of their benefactors. The prior and 

 convent of Rochester, threatened to pronounce every 

 year the irrevocable sentence of damnation on the 

 person who should dare to purloin or conceal a La- 

 tin translation of Aristotle's Poetics, or even oblite- 

 rate the title. Roger de Insula, dean of York, pre- 

 sented several Bibles to the University of Oxford, in 

 the year 1225, with this provision, that every student 

 who perused them should deposit a cautionary pledge. 

 So late as the year 1300, the library of that univer- 

 sity consisted of only a few tracts, chained or lock- 

 ed in chests, in the choir of St Mary's Church. One 

 of the statutes of St Mary's College, in Oxford, 

 ( 1440) enacts, that no scholar shall occupy. a book in 

 the library more than an hour, or two hours at most, 

 so that others shall be hindered from the use of the 

 same. A more striking proof could not be adduced 

 of the paucity of books which the library then con- 

 tained. The celebrated library established by Hum- 

 phrey, Duke of Glocester, in the same university, did 

 not contain more than GOO volumes. In the begin- 

 ning of the fourteenth century, the only classics in 

 the possession of the University of Paris, were single 

 copies of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius. 



Some idea of the extravagant price of books in Their high- 

 these ages of ignorance, may be formed from the price in the 

 following well authenticated facts : The Homilies of middle 

 Bede, and St Austin's Psalter, were purchased, in the a S e3 * 

 year 1174, by Walter, prior of St Swithins, at Win- 

 chester, from the monks of Dorchester, in Oxford- 

 shire, for twelve measures of barley, and a splendid 

 pall, on which was embroidered, in silver, the histo-- 

 ry of St Birinus converting a Saxon king. About 

 the year 1400, a copy of John of Meun's Roman de 



