The form of books seems to have been originally square, to which we find frequent allusions in Scrip'. ture, under the appellation sephir, translated by the Septuagint 4 in; square tables. When they came to be written on flexible materials, they were rolled up in scrolls, called by the Greeks xorlxxix, and vo. lumina by the Romans. Only one side of the paper, or parchment, was written upon, and one sheet was always joined to the end of another, till the volume, or book, was finished, when. it was rolled up on a cylinder, or staff. To each end of this stick was affixed a ball, or nob, which was employed as a handle for evolving ' the scroll. These balls were called umbilici, or cor nea, and were generally made of bone, wood, or horn, and often carved and adorned with ivory, silver, gold, or precious stones. Only one book was inclu ded in a volume, so that a work gciierally consisted of as many volumes as books. On the outside was 'generally written the title, Di the Oriental countries, it .is customary not 'only to roll up their books in the manner which we have described, but to wrap them in an elegant and costly covering, and to inscribe on the covering a title indicating the general tenor of their contents. 'This custom of writing on the outside of the cover ing of a book, or letter, has led Chrysostom to sup. pose, that, in the passage of the S9th Psalm, which our translators have rendered, " In the volume of the book it is written of me," the word translated vo lume was the wrapper in which the sacred book was ; and that on this wrapper was inscribed a title, which signified " the coming of the Messiah:" This interpretation suggests a much more distinct idea than the English word volume ; for, as every Hebrew book was in reality a roll, or volume, the passage, according to our version, merely signifies, " In the book it is written of me." But, when we refer it to the.case in which the book was'inclosed, the expression becomes clear and energetic, implying, that the sum and substance of .the sacred book is, that " the Messiah cometh ;" which title might, with great propriety, be inscribed on the wrapper or covering of these sacred Writingi.
In,another translation this expression is rendered Oloto, which, seems to intimate, that the motto was inscribed on the cylinder, round which books of the form we have been describing were rolled. In gene ral, the cylinder extended far enough beyond the parchment, paper, or writing material, to exhibit conveniently, by a title, the general purport of the volume. In illustration of .this idea, Mr Harmer, in the fourth volume of his Observatioiis on Scripture, mentions a circle of gold, with the name of one of bur Saxon princes 'inscribed upon it, and ornamented after the rude manner of thine times, which, he sup Poses, might be designed to case-the end of the cy linder, on which some book belonging to that mo narch, or relating to him, was rolled. Of this an. cient piece of gold there is an engraving in the seventh 'olume of the Archcvologia, or Transactions qf the Antiquaridn Society. The square form, composed Of separate leaves, which is now universal in Europe, is said to havc.becn first invented by one of the kings of Pergantus ; and soon came into general usc. We are assured by Montfaucon, that, of the numerous Greek manuscripts which he had seen, only two were in the form of rolls, the rest were made up much in the same manner as modern books.
The internal arrangement of books has varied con. ' iidcrably in different countries, and at different pe riods. At first, the letters were only separated by lines, and it was long before their separation into in dividual words was even thought of. While this mode of writing prevailed, the utmost care was ne cessary to guard against errors; and accordingly we are informed, that the Rabbis, who were particularly anxious for the purity of the sacred text, knew the exact number of letters which a book contained. The inconvenient., of this mode of writing suggested the division of letters into separate words ; and the love of precision, by degrees introduced the practice of noting these words with accents, and distributing them, by different points and marks, into periods, pa ragraphs, sections, and chapters. In Hebrew, and other oriental books, the lines run from right to left ; the Northern and Western nations write from left to 'right ; the Greeks followed both directions alternate - ly, going in the one, and returning in the other,; in Chinese books, the line's run from top to bottom. The conclusion of a book was anciently marked with a figure G, called coronis ; and the whole book was sometimes washed with cedar oil, or strewed between the leaves with citron chips, to prevent it. from ,rot ting. Certain Tormulm were occasionally used Atthe beginning and end of books; thus,we find, at the end of the books of..Exodzis,, Leviticus, Numbers, Ezekiel, the word Tr', be courageous, as if to bort the reader to p,ersev,ere, and proceed to, the lowing book. Books' were ,often guarded,
at the conclusion, with imprecations against such as should falsify them ; as we find in ,the Apocalypse, It is with a similar view that the Nlahometans place at the beginning of all their books the name, of God, which is regarded with such reverence, as to afford the most protection to ,every thing on which it appears.
Before the invention of printing, and of the manu facture of paper from lineni,books were so. scarce c and dear,'as to be without the reach of all but per t sons of considerable opulence. Though the materials of which they were made had, been as 'cheap and as plentiful as paper is at present, the labour of ,multi. plying copies in manuscript would always have kept their -numbers comparatively scanty, and their price high. Hence, in all the nations of antiquity, learning was almost exclusively confined to people of rank ; and the lower orders were only ,rescued, from the darkness of total ignorance, by the,refleeted light of their superiors, and raise& above the rudeness of bar barism, by that partial improvement which men of cultivation and refinement, necessarily impart, in a •greater or less degree, to all within the sphere of, their influence. The papyrus being the cheapest material for writing, was, of course, in :most general use. But when the Saracens had conquered Egypt, in the seventh century, and the connection between that country and Europe was .entirely broken off, the papyrus could no longer he procured, and books, already sufficiently rare, became pow,almost unattain able. Parchment, the only substance. for ,writing which then remained, was so .difficult to be procured, that it was customary to erase the writing of ancient manuscripts, to make room for some other composi tion. In this manner, many of the best works, of an tiquity were lost for ever ; the noblest effusions of Cicero, or Virgil, might be exchanged for the bar barous jargon of a monkish declaimer ; and,the gant and instructive narrations of Livy and Tacitus might be lost, for the superstitious detail ,of pretended miracles, or the legendary story of 'a saint. History records many facts which place in a very striking light the scarcity, and consequent value, of books, during the dark ages. Private persons seldom pos sessed any books' t all ; and even distinguished mo nasteries could, in general, boast of no more than a single missal. Towards the end of the seventh cen tury, even. the papal library at Rome was so poorly' supplied with books, that Pope St Martin requested Sanctamand, bishop of Maestricht, to supply this de fect, if possible, from the remotest parts of Germany. two centuries after, Lupus, abbot of Fer rieres, France, sent two of his monks to Pope Be nedict III. to beg of Cicero de Oratore, and for," the abbot, "al though we have part of these books, there is no complete, copy of all ,France." John de Pontissara, bishop;of Winchester, on borrowing from his cathedral convent of St Swithins, at Winchester, (in 1299) a with marginal, annotations, in two folio volumes, gave a bond for the return of it, drawn tip with great solemnity. For the bequest of this. Bible,..along, with •100 marks, the monks were so grateful, that they appointed a daily mass to be ;said for soul of the donor. To present a book to religious house, was thought so valuable a donation as to merit eternal salvation ; and it was on the altar with great ceremony." Books were some times given to monasteries, on the condition that the donor should have the use of them for life ; and. sometimes to private persons, with the special in• junction, that they who received them should pray for the souls of their benefactors. The prior and convent of Rochester; threatened to, pronounce every year the irrevocable sentence of damnation on the person who should dare to purloin or conceal a La tin translation of Aristotle's Poetics, or even oblites rate the title. de of York, pre sented several Bibles to the. University of Oxford, in the year 1225, with,this provision, that every student who perused them. should depoit a cautionary pledge. So late as the year 1300, of that, univer sity consisted of only,a few tracts, chained or lock ed in chests, .in.the choir of St Mary's Church. One. of the statutes, of St ,Mary's College, in Oxford, (1410),enacts, that no scholar shall occupy, a book in the library more than an hour, or two hours at most,. so that others shall be hindered from .the use of the same. A more, striking proof could. pot. be adduced of the, paucity of books which the library. then con tained. The celebrated library establiihed by Hum phrey, Duke of Glocester, in the same university, did not contain more. than 600 volumes. In the begin ning of .the fourteenth century, the only classics in the possession. of the University of Paris, were single copies of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan,.and Boethius.