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                           THE STORY OF BOOKS




The Useful Knowledge Library


PLANT LIFE. By Grant Allen.

ARCHITECTURE. By P. L. Waterhouse.

THE STARS. By G. F. Chambers, F.R.A.S.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM. By George F. Chambers, F.R.A.S.

FOREST AND STREAM. By James Rodway.

THE MIND. By Prof. J. M. Baldwin.

THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. By the Rev. E. D. Price, F.G.S.

EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE EAST. By Robert E. Anderson, M.A., F.A.S.

THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. By M. M. Pattison Muir, M.A.

A PIECE OF COAL. By E. A. Martin.

THE EARTH IN PAST AGES. By H. G. Seeley, F.R.S.

BIRD-LIFE. By W. P. Pycraft.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. By Joseph Jacobs.

PRIMITIVE MAN. By Edward Clodd.

THOUGHT AND FEELING. By Frederick Ryland, M.A.

THE BRITISH RACE. By John Munro.

GERM LIFE. By H. W. Conn.

ANIMAL LIFE. By B. Lindsay.

COTTON PLANT. By F. Wilkinson, F.G.S.

ECLIPSES. By G. F. Chambers, F.R.A.S.

ELECTRICITY. By J. Munro.

WEATHER. By G. F. Chambers, F.R.A.S.

WILD FLOWERS. By Rev. Prof. Henslow.

                      LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON




[Illustration: EARLY PRINTERS AT WORK.]




                                  THE
                             STORY OF BOOKS

                                   BY
                       GERTRUDE BURFORD RAWLINGS

              Author of "The Story of the British Coinage"

                          HODDER AND STOUGHTON
                           PUBLISHERS, LONDON




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                      PAGE

     I. Introductory                                            9

    II. The Preservation of Literature                         13

   III. Books and Libraries in Classical Times                 26

    IV. Books in Mediæval Times                                36

     V. Libraries in Mediæval Times                            56

    VI. The Beginning of Printing                              70

   VII. Who Invented Moveable Types?                           81

  VIII. Gutenberg and the Mentz Press                          89

    IX. Early Printing                                        103

     X. Early Printing in Italy and some other Countries      110

    XI. Early Printing in England                             118

   XII. Early Printing in Scotland                            131

  XIII. Early Printing in Ireland                             138

   XIV. Book Bindings                                         144

    XV. How a Modern Book is Produced                         159

  Postscript                                                  164

  Index                                                       166




ILLUSTRATIONS


  Early Printers at Work                                     Frontispiece

                                                                     PAGE

  Page from the Book of Kells                                          38

  Part of Page from the Book of Kells                                  39

  Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels                                    44

  Page from the Biblia Pauperum                                        76

  Type of the Mentz Indulgence                                         95

  Page from the Mazarin Bible                                          98

  Type of the Mazarin Bible                                            99

  Type of the Subiaco Lactantius                                      111

  Type of the Aldine Virgil, 1501                                     114

  Type of Caxton's Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres,
  Westminster, 1477                                                   123

  Boys Learning Grammar                                               125

  Caxton's Device                                                     127

  Type of Wynkyn de Worde's Higden's Polychronicon, London, 1495      129

  Myllar's Device                                                     132

  Title Page of O'Kearney's Irish Alphabet and Catechism              140

  Upper Cover of Melissenda's Psalter                                 149




THE STORY OF BOOKS




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


The book family is a very old and a very noble one, and has rendered
great service to mankind, although, as with other great houses, all its
members are not of equal worth and distinction. But since books are so
common nowadays as to be taken quite as matters of course, probably few
people give any thought to the long chain of events which, reaching from
the dim past up to our own day, has been necessary for their evolution.
Yet if we look round on our bookshelves, whether we measure their
contents by hundreds or by thousands, and consider how mighty is the
power of these inanimate combinations of "rag-paper with black ink on
them," and how all but limitless their field of action, it is but a step
further to wonder what the first books were like. Given the living,
working brain to fashion thoughts and create fancies, to whom did it
first occur to write a book, what language and characters and material
did he use, when did he write, and what did he write about? And although
these questions can never be answered, an attempt to follow them up
will lead the inquirer into many fascinating bye-ways of knowledge. It
is not, however, the purpose of these pages to deal at length with the
ancient history of the _manuscript_ book, but, after briefly noticing
the chief links which connect the volumes of to-day with primeval
records, to present to the reader a few of the many points of interest
offered by the modern history of the _printed_ book.

                   *       *       *       *       *

=The Beginning of Writing.=--Books began with writing, and writing began
at the time when man first bethought himself to make records, so that
the progenitor of the beautiful handwriting and no less beautiful print
of the civilised world is to be looked for in the rude drawing which
primeval man scratched with a pointed flint on a smooth bone, or on a
rock, representing the beast he hunted, or perhaps himself, or one of
his fellows. The exact degree of importance he attached to these
drawings we cannot hope to discover. They may have been cherished from
purely æsthetic motives, or they may have served, at times, a merely
utilitarian end and acted, perhaps, as memoranda. However this may be,
these early drawings are the germs from which sprang writing, the parent
of books, and liberator of literature, that great force of which a book
is but the vehicle. How these drawings were gradually changed into
letters, in other words, the story of the alphabet, has been already
told in this series by Mr Edward Clodd, and therefore we need not deal
further with the subject here.

Writing once learned, and alphabets once formulated, the machinery for
making books, with the human mind as its mainspring, was fairly in
motion. "Certainly the Art of Writing," says Carlyle, "is the most
miraculous of all things man has devised.... With the art of Writing, of
which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively
insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind
commenced." That these words only express the feeling of our far away
ancestors, a cursory glance into the mythology of various peoples will
prove. For wherever there is a tradition respecting writing, that
tradition almost invariably, if not always, connects the great invention
with the gods or with some sacred person. The Egyptians attributed it to
Thoth, the Babylonians and Assyrians to Nebo, the Buddhists to Buddha,
the Greeks to Hermes. The Scandinavians honoured Odin as the first
cutter of the mysterious runes, and the Irish derived their ogham from
the sacred Ogma of the Tuatha de Danaan. And it is noteworthy how, from
time immemorial, writing, and the making of books, have been considered
high and honourable accomplishments, and how closely they have ever been
connected with the holy functions of priesthood.

                   *       *       *       *       *

=Materials for Writing and Books.=--The early forms of books were
various, and, to modern eyes, more or less clumsy. Wood or bark was one
of the oldest substances used to receive writing. Stone was no doubt
older still, but stone inscriptions are outside our subject. The early
Greeks and Romans employed tablets of soft metal, and wooden leaves
coated with wax, when they had anything to write, impressing the
characters with a stilus. Thus Pausanius relates that he saw the
original copy of Hesiod's _Works and Days_ written on leaden tablets.
The wooden leaves, when bound together at one side, foreshadowed the
form of book which is now almost universal, and were called by the
Romans _caudex_, or _codex_ (originally meaning a tree-stump), in
distinction to the _volumen_, which was always a parchment or papyrus
roll. The oldest manuscript in existence, however, is on papyrus, which,
as is well known, was the chief writing-material of the ancient world.
Although the discovery that skins of animals, when properly prepared,
formed a convenient and durable writing-material, was made at a very
early date, the papyrus held its own as the writing-material of literary
Egypt, Greece, and Rome, until about the fourth or fifth century of our
era.

The books of Babylonia and Assyria took the form of thick clay tablets
of various sizes. The wedge-shaped characters they bore were made by
impressing the wet, soft clay with a triangular-pointed instrument of
wood, bone, or metal. The tablet was then baked, and as recent
discoveries prove, rendered exceedingly durable. It is a matter of
conjecture as to whether the form of the original documents of the Old
Testament was that of the Babylonian tablets, or of the Egyptian papyrus
rolls, or of rolls of parchment. Perhaps all three were employed by the
various biblical writers at different times.

It is stretching a point, perhaps, to include among writing materials
the tablets of bamboo bark which bore the earliest Chinese characters,
since the inscriptions were carved. The Chinese, however, soon discarded
such primitive uses, and the paper which is so indispensable to-day was
invented by them at a very early date, though it remained unknown to
Europe until the Arabs introduced it about the tenth century, A.D. One
of the earliest extant writings on paper is an Arabic "Treatise on the
Nourishment of the Human Body," written in 960 A.D., but it seems to
have been printing which really brought paper into fashion, for paper
manuscripts are rare compared with those of parchment and vellum.




CHAPTER II

THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE


It is easier to find the beginning of writing than the beginning of
literature. Although we know for certain that the ancient nations of the
world had books and libraries, that they preserved traditions, stored
records and knowledge, and assisted memory by means of their tablets,
their monuments, and their papyri, we shall probably never know when the
art of writing was first applied to strictly literary purposes, and
still less likely is it that we shall ever discover when works of the
imagination were first recorded for the edification of mankind. It is
not very rash, however, to assume that as soon as the art had developed
the ancients put it to much the same uses as we do, except, perhaps,
that they did not vulgarise it, and no one wrote who had not something
to write about. But we are not without specimens of antique literatures.
Egypt has preserved for us many different specimens of her literary
produce of thousands of years ago--historical records, works of religion
and philosophy, fiction, magic, and funeral ritual. Assyria has
bequeathed to us hundreds of the clay books which formed the great royal
library at Nineveh, books of records, mythology, morals, grammar,
astronomy, astrology, magic; books of reference, such as geographical
tables, lists of temples, plants, birds, and other things. In the Old
Testament we have all that now remains of Israelitish writings, and the
early literatures of China and India are also partly known to us. After
these the writings of Greece and Rome are of comparatively recent
origin, and moreover, they are nearer to us in other respects besides
the merely chronological. The literature of Greece, dating from the far
Homeric age, grew up a strong and beautiful factor in Greek life, and
Rome, drawing first her alphabet and then her literature from the land
before which she stooped, even while she conquered it, passed them on as
an everlasting possession to the peoples of the western world. The fact
of the literary pre-eminence of Greece partly helps to explain why Greek
manuscripts form the bulk of the early writings now extant.

In considering how early literature has been preserved, therefore, we
are hardly concerned with Egyptian papyri or cuneiform tablets, but
with the writings of Greece and Rome, or writings produced under Greek
or Roman influence. And it is curious that while the libraries and books
of older nations have survived in comparatively large numbers, there
should be no Greek literary manuscripts older than about 160 B.C., and
even these are very fragmentary and scarce. The earliest Latin document
known is dated 55 A.D., and is an unimportant wax tablet from Pompeii.
For this lack of early documents many causes are responsible, and those
who remember that it is not human beings only who suffer from the
vicissitudes inseparable from existence will wonder, not that we have so
few ancient writings in our present possession, but that we have any.
The evidence of many curious and interesting discoveries of manuscripts
made from time to time goes to show that accident, rather than design,
has worked out their preservation, and that the civilised world owes its
present store of ancient literature more to good luck than good
management, to use a handy colloquialism. It is true, of course, that in
early days there were many who guarded books as very precious things,
but in times of wars and tumults people would naturally give little
thought to such superfluities. Fire and war have been the agencies most
destructive of books, in the opinion of the author of _Philobiblon_, but
carelessness and ignorance, wanton destruction and natural decay, are
also accountable for some part of the great losses which have wasted so
large a share of the literary heritage, and although we are deeply
indebted to monastic work for the transmission of classic lore as well
as of Christian compositions, we can hardly conclude that the monkish
scribes wrote solely for the benefit of posterity. Their immediate
purpose, no doubt, and naturally so, was much narrower, and identified
the service of God with the enrichment of their houses. Besides, they
did not hesitate to erase older writings in order that they might use
the parchment again for their own, whenever it suited them to do so.

Before noting some of the ways by which ancient literature has come down
to the present day, let us for a moment transport ourselves into the
past, and see how a wealthy Roman lover of letters would set about
gathering a collection of books. Having no lack of means, all that is
best in the literary world will be at his service. He will first take
care that the works of every Greek writer which can possibly be
obtained, as well as those of Roman authors, are represented in his
library by well-written papyrus rolls containing good, correct texts. If
he can obtain old manuscripts or original autographs of famous writers,
so much the better; but whereas ordinary volumes will cost him
comparatively little, on these he must expend large sums. If a book on
which he has set his heart is not to be purchased, he may be able to
obtain the loan of it, so that it may be transcribed for him by his
_librarius_ or writing-slave. If he can neither borrow nor purchase what
he desires, he may commission the bookseller to send for it to
Alexandria, where there is an unrivalled store of books and many skilled
scribes ready to make copies of them.

But it is not easy to estimate with any degree of certainty the quantity
of literary material available, say, at the time of the establishment of
the first public library in Rome, which was probably about 39 B.C. Books
were common and booksellers flourished. Greek and Roman writings were
preserved on papyrus, not neglected or lost, and the various parts of
what we now call the Old Testament probably existed in the Hebrew
synagogues. We may, perhaps, assume that the Roman book collector, did
he choose to take the necessary trouble, might add to his collection
some of the writings of ancient Egypt. But no doubt Greek and Latin
authors only are of value in his eyes. At this point it is dangerous to
speculate further, and we must leave the imaginary Roman, and, advancing
to our own time, where we are on surer ground, ask what remnants of old
records and literature have come down to us, and how have they been
preserved?

It will be disappointing news, perhaps, to those to whom the facts are
fresh, that no original manuscript of any classical author, and no
original manuscript of any part of the Bible, Old Testament or New, has
yet come to light. Nothing is known of any of these documents except
through the medium of copies, and in some cases very many copies indeed
intervene between us and the original. For instance, the oldest Homeric
manuscript known, with the exception of one or two fragments, is not
older than the first century B.C., and the most ancient Biblical
manuscript known, a fragment of a Psalter, is assigned to the late third
or early fourth century A.D. The earliest New Testament manuscript
extant, the first leaf of a book of St Matthew's