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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.