folded and re-folded serving equally as well in binding as a ternion, quaternion, or quinternion of folio sheets. This, of course, led to the ‘imposition’ of pages in formes of 4, 8, and 12 pages and upwards, according to the size of the book printed. Title-pages, folios, running head-lines, catch-lines, signatures, and imprints with dates and names, were matters about which the Fathers of Typography did not at first much concern themselves. Their orthography, as well as their divisions of words, was arbitrary; their abbreviations abominable, and their punctuation absurd; the comma and the semicolon were unknown, the points made use of being an oblique dash (/) the colon (:) and the full point (.); these were occasionally varied as follows, ./ /. /˙ ./˙ ˙/. // ∴ .:. ∴:∴ &c. A straight dash | supplied the place of a hyphen, and a parallel || indicated the end of a paragraph. The first leaf of a book was generally left a blank, and a blank space was left at the head of the commencing chapter of a work, to be filled up with a vignette or an illuminated scroll. Spaces were also left for initial capitals, and for capitals commencing sentences, when small letters were not used instead. These were so left in order to be filled in by the rubricator, who sometimes carelessly inserted a wrong letter. Names of persons and places were printed indifferently with or without capitals.[143] But in all these matters the printers merely followed bad examples--that of the scribes whose downfall they were effecting. One feature is especially characteristic of the oldest books, viz. the irregularity of the lines on the right hand margin of the columns or pages, particularly when the larger kinds of type were used. This arose from the mode of composing, which interfered with the spacing out of the words to the ends of the lines. When however that ingenious implement, the metal composing stick--the printer’s space-compelling gauge,--was invented, this defect was remedied; and before the first generation of printers passed away, all the blemishes above recounted had disappeared from the works of those who deserve to be distinguished as Masters in their Art. The engraving given below will explain the nature of this implement better than any written description. The slide, running parallel with the head, with its slotted foot into which was inserted the nut for the screw which passed through and fastened it down to the ledge on which the types rested, enabled the compositor to ‘set’ his types with accuracy to any measure required, and to space out the words to the right hand, so as to make them line in the margin as straight and even as the commencing letters on the left hand. With the aid of the useful adjunct to the ‘stick,’ the ‘setting-rule,’--(a strip of brass the height and length of the line, with a projecting neb at the top right hand corner)--he could compose line after line with ease and speed. The special use