Table-hooks written upon with styles were not entirely laid aside in Chaucer’s time, who describes them in his Sompner’s tale:—­

His fellow had a staffe tipp’d with horne, A paire of tables all of iverie; And a pointell polished fetouslie, And wrote alwaies the names, as he stood, Of all folke, that gave hem any good.[10]

By the word pen in the translation of the Bible we must understand an iron style.  Table-books of ivory are still used for memoranda, written with black-lead pencils.  The Romans used ivory to write the edicts of the senate on, with a black colour; and the expression of libri elephantini, which some authors imagine alludes to books that for their size were called elephantine, were most probably composed of ivory, the tusk of the elephant:  among the Romans they were undoubtedly scarce.

The pumice stone was a writing-material of the ancients; they used it to smoothe the roughness of the parchment, or to sharpen their reeds.

In the progress of time the art of writing consisted in painting with different kinds of ink.  This novel mode of writing occasioned them to invent other materials proper to receive their writing; the thin bark of certain trees and plants, or linen; and at length, when this was found apt to become mouldy, they prepared the skins of animals; on the dried skins of serpents were once written the Iliad and Odyssey.  The first place where they began to dress these skins was Pergamus, in Asia; whence the Latin name is derived of Pergamenoe or parchment.  These skins are, however, better known amongst the authors of the purest Latin under the name of membrana; so called from the membranes of various animals of which they were composed.  The ancients had parchments of three different colours, white, yellow, and purple.  At Rome white parchment was disliked, because it was more subject to be soiled than the others, and dazzled the eye.  They generally wrote in letters of gold and silver on purple or violet parchment.  This custom continued in the early ages of the church; and copies of the evangelists of this kind are preserved in the British Museum.

When the Egyptians employed for writing the bark of a plant or reed, called papyrus, or paper-rush, it superseded all former modes, for its convenience.  Formerly it grew in great quantities on the sides of the Nile.  This plant has given its name to our paper, although the latter is now composed of linen and rags, and formerly had been of cotton-wool, which was but brittle and yellow; and improved by using cotton rags, which they glazed.  After the eighth century the papyrus was superseded by parchment.  The Chinese make their paper with silk.  The use of paper is of great antiquity.  It is what the ancient Latinists