ANCIENT PECULIARITIES.
The pages were either large or small folios, but sometimes quartos, and, the early books were therefore cumbrous and unhandy. Aldus Manuccio, of Venice, was the first to introduce the octavo form.
The leaves were without running titles, direction-words, paginal numbers, or divisions into paragraphs.
The character itself was a rude old Gothic (similar to that now known as Old English or Black) mixed with Secretary, designed to imitate the handwriting of the times; the words were printed so close to one another that the matter was not easily read.
To avoid divisions, the early printers used vowels with a mark of abbreviation over them to denote that one or more letters were omitted in the word: e.g. co̅pose for compose, co̅pletio̅ for completion, &c. No punctuation-marks were used, except the colon and full point; but an oblique stroke (/) was after a while introduced, for which the comma was finally substituted. Logotypes were frequently employed.
Orthography was various and arbitrary. Proper names and sentences were often begun with small letters, as well as the first words in lines of poetry.
Blanks were left for the places of titles, initial letters, and other ornaments, to be supplied afterward by illuminators, whose calling did not long survive the masterly improvements made by the printers in this branch of their art. These ornaments were exquisitely fine, and curiously variegated with the most beautiful colours, and even with gold and silver. The margins, likewise, were frequently charged with a variety of figures, of saints, birds, beasts, monsters, flowers, &c., which sometimes had relation to the contents of the page, though frequently none at all. These embellishments were often very costly.
The name of the printer, place of his residence, &c. were either omitted or put at the end of the book, with some pious ejaculation or doxology.
The date was also omitted, or involved in some cramped design, or printed either at full length or in numerical letters, and sometimes partly one and partly the other: thus, One Thousand CCCC and lxxiiii; but always placed at the end of the book.
There was no variety of character, nor intermixture of Roman and Italic, which were later inventions; but the pages were printed in a Gothic letter of the same size throughout. Catch-words at the end of the foot-line (now generally abolished) were first used at Venice, by Vindeline de Spire. The inventor of signatures is said to have been Antonio Zarotti of Milan, about 1470.
Books were often encased in massive coverings, which were ornamented with florid and arabesque designs. Jewels and precious metals, the finest stuffs, and the most gorgeous colours were sometimes employed. Scaliger says, that his grandmother had a printed Psalter, the cover of which was two inches thick. On the inner side was a receptacle, containing a small silver crucifix, with the name of Berenica Codronia de la Scala behind it.
Two or three hundred copies of a work were considered to be a large edition.