eful circumstances in literary history.

Fuller with quaint humour observes on INDEXES--"An INDEX is a necessary
implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein
the carriages of an army are termed _Impedimenta_. Without this, a large
author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I
confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is _only Indical_; when
scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at
the tables, which are _calces librorum_, neglecting the body of the
book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used
by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit
thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an
index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it."

EARLY PRINTING.

There is some probability that this art originated in China, where it
was practised long before it was known in Europe. Some European
traveller might have imported the hint.[30] That the Romans did not
practise the art of printing cannot but excite our astonishment, since
they actually used it, unconscious of their rich possession. I have seen
Roman stereotypes, or immoveable printing types, with which they stamped
their pottery.[31] How in daily practising the art, though confined to
this object, it did not occur to so ingenious a people to print their
literary works, is not easily to be accounted for. Did the wise and
grave senate dread those inconveniences which attend its indiscriminate
use? Or perhaps they did not care to deprive so large a body of scribes
of their business. Not a hint of the art itself appears in their
writings.

When first the art of printing was discovered, they only made use of one
side of a leaf; they had not yet found out the expedient of impressing
the other. Afterwards they thought of pasting the blank sides, which
made them appear like one leaf. Their blocks were made of soft woods,
and their letters were carved; but frequently breaking, the expense and
trouble of carving and gluing new letters suggested our moveable types
which, have produced an almost miraculous celerity in this art. The
modern stereotype, consisting of entire pages in solid blocks of metal,
and, not being liable to break like the soft wood at first used, has
been profitably employed for works which require to be frequently
reprinted. Printing in carved blocks of wood must have greatly retarded