Horn-books.Horn-books. One form of wooden tablet continued in use, especially in boys' schools, till the sixteenth century. This was a wooden board, rather smaller than an ordinary school-boy's slate, with a long handle at the bottom; on it was fixed a sheet of vellum or paper on which was written or (in the latest examples) printed the Alphabet, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer or such like. Over this a thin sheet of transparent horn was nailed, whence these tablets were often called "horn-books." A good example dating from the sixteenth century is now preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.
CHAPTER II.
Classical Manuscripts written with Pen and Ink.
To return now to classical forms of manuscripts, it appears to have been a long time before the book or codex form of manuscript was extended from the wood and ivory tablets to writings on parchment or paper.
| The roll form of MS. The codex form. |
The roll form of MS.It seems probable that throughout the Greek period manuscripts on paper or vellum were usually, if not always, in the shape of a long roll; and that it was not till about the beginning of the Roman Empire that leaves of parchment or paper were sometimes cut up into pages and bound together in the form of the older tablets. The codex form.During the first two or three centuries of the Empire, manuscripts were produced in both of these forms—the codex and the volumen; but the roll form was by far the commoner, almost till the transference of the seat of government to Byzantium.
The roll form of book is the one shown in many of the wall paintings of Pompeii; but on some sarcophagi reliefs of the second century A.D. books both of the roll and the codex shape are represented[[9]].
| Writing with a pen. |
Writing with a pen.Having given some account of the various classical forms of manuscript in which the writing is incised with a sharp stilus, we will now pass on to the other chief forms of manuscript which were written with a pen and with ink or other pigment.
| Books of the dead. |