Formerly, a “Table Book” was a memorandum book, on which any thing was graved or written without ink. It is mentioned by Shakspeare. Polonius, on disclosing Ophelia’s affection for Hamlet to the king, inquires “When I had seen this hot love on the wing, ----------------------- what might you, Or my dear majesty, your queen here, think, If I had play’d the desk, or table-book?” Dr. Henry More, a divine, and moralist, of the succeeding century, observes, that “Nature makes clean the _table-book_ first, and then portrays upon it what she pleaseth.” In this sense, it might have been used instead of a _tabula rasa_, or sheet of blank writing paper, adopted by Locke as an illustration of the human mind in its incipiency. It is figuratively introduced to nearly the same purpose by Swift: he tells us that “Nature’s fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o’er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools.” Dryden says, “Put into your _Table-Book_ whatsoever you judge worthy.”[1] I hope I shall not unworthily err, if, in the commencement of a work under this title, I show what a _Table Book_ was. Table books, or tablets, of wood, existed before the time of Homer, and among the Jews before the Christian æra. The table books of the Romans were nearly like ours, which will be described presently; except that the leaves, which were two, three, or more in number, were of wood surfaced with wax. They wrote on them with a style, one end of which was pointed for that purpose, and the other end rounded or flattened, for effacing or scraping out. Styles were made of nearly all the metals, as well as of bone and ivory; they were differently formed, and resembled ornamented skewers; the common style was iron. More anciently, the leaves of the table book were without wax, and marks were made by the iron style on the bare wood. The Anglo-Saxon style was very handsome. Dr. Pegge was of opinion that the well-known jewel of Alfred, preserved in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, was the head of the style sent by that king with Gregory’s Pastoral to Athelney.[2]