It appears unquestionable, then, that about the year 1740 English publishers depended for the execution of fine books upon paper imported from Genoa, and that the interruption of the supply from this quarter occasioned great inconvenience for a time, keeping an important book at a standstill for several months, but soon called the manufacture of fine paper into activity, as a branch of English industry. It would be interesting to know how long before 1740 this trade originated, and how long after that date it continued. It is scarcely likely that it flourished during the warlike times of Queen Anne; but it probably revived during the quarter-century of tranquillity which followed the Treaty of Utrecht. It is not probable that it long survived the development of the manufacture of fine paper in England. Though inferior to the Italian, the English paper was quite good enough to displace this if it had the advantage of superior cheapness, as it certainly must have had. Ample materials for deciding these questions probably exist on the shelves of the King's Library. It should be mentioned that there was an impression of the "Life of Cicero" on small paper, but the great majority of the splendid list of subscribers prefixed to the work appear as subscribing for large-paper copies. NOTE.—The writer might have remarked that Brian Walton, in the preface to his superb edition of the Polyglott Bible (1657) expresses, in a passage afterwards suppressed, his obligation to the Protector and the Council of State, for having remitted in his behalf the duty on paper; which is undoubtedly to be understood of a tax on paper imported from abroad. ON SOME COLOPHONS OF THE EARLY PRINTERS[197:1] The paper to which I am about to invite attention belongs to the class which Mr. Chancellor Christie has very justly entitled "haphazard papers," lying outside the proper work of the Library Association, and contributing little or nothing to promote it. It is written to recommend a slight literary undertaking which could not possibly find a place in the programme of our body. It can only plead that a certain variety has always been thought conducive to the interest of our gatherings; that it may be well to show that no province of book-lore is altogether too remote for our attention; and that a prolusion on an out-of-the-way subject may have, so to speak, a kind of decorative value; as a sprig of barberries, though nobody wants to eat it, may serve as garnish for a substantial dish. The little enterprise I have to recommend is the publishing, in a small volume, of such colophons, or attestations of the completion of a book by a printer, as belong to the fifteenth century, and possess individual features of interest, not being mere matter-of-fact announcements or repetitions from former productions of the same press.