_Early MS. on paper._ The British Museum possesses one of the oldest known books on paper (_Arundel Manuscripts_, 268); this is a collection of _Astronomical treatises_ written by an Italian scribe early in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century the Spanish manufactories of _cotton_-paper were on the decline, and the first manufactory of _linen_-paper was started at Fabriano in northern Italy. In 1340 another manufactory was set up in Padua, and before the close of the fourteenth century paper was made in nearly all the chief cities of northern Italy, especially in Milan and Venice, and as far south as Florence and Siena. In Germany paper-making began in Mentz in about 1320; and in 1390 a manufactory was started at Nuremberg with the aid of Italian workmen. South Germany, however, was supplied with paper from northern Italy till the fifteenth century. In Paris and other places in France paper began to be made soon after the first manufactories in Italy were started. _Paper in England._ In England cotton-paper, especially for legal documents, was largely used in the fourteenth century. In Oxford, in the year 1355, a quire of paper, small folio size, cost five pence, equal in modern value to eight or nine shillings. In the fifteenth century its value had decreased to three pence or four pence the quire. Paper does not appear to have been made in England till the reign of Henry VII.; before that time it was mainly imported from Germany and the Netherlands. _Earliest English paper._ All Caxton's books are printed on foreign paper, and the first book printed on paper which was made in England was Wynkyn de Worde's Bartholomaeus, _De proprietatibus rerum_, printed about the year 1495, four years after Caxton's death, with the following interesting _colophon_, which alludes to the first paper manufactory in England, set up by John Tate at Hertford. This _colophon_, which does not do credit to Wynkyn de Worde's literary style, runs thus: And also of your charyte call to remembraunce The soule of William Caxton first prynter of this boke In laten tongue at Coleyn hymself to auance That every wel disyosyd man may theron loke And John Tate the yonger joye mote he broke Whiche late hathe in Englond doo make this paper thynne That now in our englyssh this boke is prynted inne. During the fifteenth century the making of paper reached its highest degree of perfection, and in the following century its excellence began to decline. _Beauty of Venetian paper._