opoly. This it
preserved until nearly the end of the 19th century, when substances
mainly composed of wood-pulp, esparto grass and clay largely took its
place, while continuing, as in the transition from papyrus to
linen-pulp, to pass under the same name (see PAPER).

So long as the use of papyrus was predominant the usual form of a book
was that of the _volumen_ or roll, wound round a stick, or sticks. The
modern form of book, called by the Latins _codex_ (a word originally
used for the stump of a tree, or block of wood, and thence for the
three-leaved tablets into which the block was sawn) was coming into
fashion in Martial's time at Rome, and gained ground in proportion as
parchment superseded papyrus. The _volumen_ as it was unrolled revealed
a series of narrow columns of writing, and the influence of this
arrangement is seen in the number of columns in the earliest codices.
Thus in the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus of the Bible, both of
the 4th century, there are respectively four and three columns to a
page; in the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) only two; in the Codex
Bezae (6th century) only one, and from this date to the invention of
printing, while there were great changes in handwriting, the arrangement
of books changed very little, single or double columns being used as was
found convenient. In the external form of books there was much the same
conservatism. In the Codex Amiatinus written in England in the 8th
century one of the miniatures shows a book in a red leather cover, and
the arrangement of the pattern on this curiously resembles that of the
15th-century red leather bindings predominant in the Biblioteca
Laurenziana at Florence, in which the codex itself is preserved. In the
same way some of the small stamps used in Oxford bindings in the 15th
century are nearly indistinguishable from those used in England three
centuries earlier. Much fuller details as to the history of written
books in these as well as other respects will be found in the article
MANUSCRIPT, to which the following account of the fortunes of books
after the invention of printing must be regarded as supplementary.

Between a manuscript written in a formal book-hand and an early printed
copy of the same work, printed in the same district as the manuscript
had been written, the difference in general appearance was very slight.
The printer's type (see TYPOGRAPHY) would as a rule be based on a
handwriting considered by the scribe