DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

(2 j quainted with the dawn, growth, and diffusion of literature, and so I will venture to discourse on the historical beginnings of books and newspapers. Circulating libraries, both public and private, bring books of all kinds within the reach of all classes. We can now purchase the best literary work at a comparatively trivial cost.* It is scarcely possible to realise the expense of books at a time when printing had not yet been invented, and when they were written and not printed. In those days the materials on which books, or to use the correct expression, manuscripts, were written, varied con- siderably at different epochs down to the remotest antiquity. The most ancient material used for this purpose is supposed to have been the leaves of the palm-tree. The original text of the Koran of Mahomet, the founder of the Mohammedan religion, was recorded on palm-leaves, and also on shoulder-bones of sheep, and kept in a domestic chest by one of the Prophet’s numerous wives. But many centuries before Ma- homet, skins were used for writing on, and it is asserted, not without some plausibility, that the autograph law of Moses was written upon prepared skins. The skins of fish, and even of serpents, were * Messrs. Ward & Lock, of Salisbury Square, in London, pub- lish the entire works of Shakespeare, his plays and poems, together with a Glossary, for the sum of—sixpence !