When books first appeared is quite uncertain; for, though the Books of Moses and the Book of Job are the most ancient of existing books, it seems from a reference Moses has made to them that there were earlier ones. Among profane writers Homer is the most ancient; he lived at the period when King Solomon reigned so gloriously. Four hundred years afterward the scattered leaves of Homer were collected and reduced to the order in which we have them; and two hundred years still later they were revised and accented, so as to have become perfect models of the purest Greek--the noblest language in the world. And, Greek words being so remarkably expressive of the meaning of the things or ideas which they are used to signify, they are now used in arts and sciences as descriptive of the subjects or things referred to; and very often in a ludicrously pedantic manner, especially among inventors of patent medicines and mechanical instruments. But it is not within the range of our subjects, or knowledge {107} even, to touch upon languages and literature, authorship and authors, and the gradual development and progress of literary composition, but simply the subject of books, as before intimated, as they have been presented to us, in their material development from age to age. In a number of the Cornhill Magazine there has appeared an article, "Publishers before the Art of Printing," which presents a very interesting account of bookmaking in Italy during the Augustan age. The brothers Sosii, celebrated by Horace, issued vast supplies of manuscript books; fashionable literature was eagerly bought from Roman booksellers; and, to supply the demand for them, slaves were educated in great numbers to read aloud to indolent ladies and gentlemen as they reclined on couches. The copying of MSS. was done principally by slave scriveners, of whom a great staff was maintained, and, by their penmanship, books and newspapers could be multiplied quickly. From the dictation of one reader to several writers a large edition, comparatively with the number of the reading public, could be soon produced; in some private families readers and transcribers were employed in this way. The demand for school-books was also great. As slave labor was very cheap, bookmaking was then correspondingly inexpensive, yet authors of high reputation were well paid by publishers. They received much larger sums than were given long after the invention of printing. Martial received for his epigrams a vast remuneration--Milton, for his Paradise Lost, only 24_l_.