“Et meditata manu componit verba trementi; Dextra tenet ferrum, vacuam tenet altera ceram. Incipit, et dubitat: scribit, damnatque tabellas: Et notat, et delet, etc.” The subjects sculptured on the outside of diptychs of this kind generally also give another and a sufficient distinction, being perhaps some domestic scene or a story from a romance, as upon combs or mirror cases. But this is not always so: for writing-tablets occasionally are found with subjects taken from the Holy Scriptures. A few examples of these writing-tablets have been preserved which have several leaves of ivory inside; although in most instances the plain leaves have been lost and the covers alone remain. A very fine and complete set, of the fourteenth century, with four inner leaves is engraved by Montfaucon (in his great work L’Antiquité expliquée) from his own collection, which had scenes carved on it from the romance of Alexander. Montfaucon describes them carefully: “Notre cabinet en a de cette dernière matière (d’ivoire), dont les deux couvertures out des bas-reliefs d’un goût barbare. Les bords des tabletes sont relevez de tous les côtez: ces bords relevez laissent un petit creux pour y placer une cire préparée, laquelle élevant un peu le page rendoit une face unie et de niveau avec les bords; on appelloit ces tabletes _tabellæ ceratæ_. On gravoit sur cette cire préparée ce qu’on vouloit écrire, et l’on effaçoit ce qu’on avoit ecrit, ou en y passant fortement dessus l’autre côté du style, quand la matière étoit plus gluante. C’est ce que les anciens appelloient _stylum vertere_, etc.” Judging from the engraving in Montfaucon’s own book, it would seem that these tablets were the work of a good artist and of the best time of that particular style; and that it was hard to speak of them as “d’un goût barbare.” Ivory writing-tablets were used in the middle ages in England by people of all ranks, and are mentioned in inventories and wills. Chaucer tells us of the preaching friar’s companion: “His felaw had a staff tipped with horn, A pair of tables all of ivory, And a pointel ypolished fetishly, And wrote alway the names, as he stood Of alle folk that gaue hem any good— —Or geve us of your braun, if ye have any, A dagon of your blanket, leve dame, Our suster dere, lo here I write your name.” A characteristic illustration occurs in Shakespeare, in the second part of King Henry the fourth. The archbishop of York says: “ ... the king is weary Of dainty and such picking grievances; And therefore will he wipe his tables clean, And keep no tell-tale to his memory.”