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.