A gentleman, whose profound knowledge of domestic antiquities surpasses that of preceding antiquaries, and remains unrivalled by his contemporaries, in his “Illustrations of Shakspeare,” notices Hamlet’s expression, “My _tables_,--meet it is I set it down.” On that passage he observes, that the Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a style was continued through the middle ages; and that specimens of wooden tables, filled with wax, and constructed in the fourteenth century, were preserved in several of the monastic libraries in France. Some of these consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. He says that in the middle ages there were table books of ivory, and sometimes, of late, in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps; and he transfers a figure of one of the latter from an old work[3] to his own: it resembles the common “slate-books” still sold in the stationers’ shops. He presumes that to such a table book the archbishop of York alludes in the second part of King Henry IV., “And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell tale to his memory.” As in the middle ages there were table-books with ivory leaves, this gentleman remarks that, in Chaucer’s “Sompnour’s Tale,” one of the friars is provided with “A pair of tables all of _ivory_, And a pointel ypolished fetishly, And wrote alway the names, as he stood, Of alle folk that yave hem any good.” He instances it as remarkable, that neither public nor private museums furnished specimens of the table books, common in Shakspeare’s time. Fortunately, this observation is no longer applicable. A correspondent, understood to be Mr. Douce, in Dr. Aikin’s “Athenæum,” subsequently says, “I happen to possess a table-book of Shakspeare’s time. It is a little book, nearly square, being three inches wide and something less than four in length, bound stoutly in calf, and fastening with four strings of broad, strong, brown tape. The title as follows: ‘Writing Tables, with a Kalender for xxiiii yeeres, with sundrie necessarie rules. The Tables made by Robert Triple. London, Imprinted for the Company of Stationers.’ The tables are inserted immediately after the almanack. At first sight they appear like what we call asses-skin, the colour being precisely the same, but the leaves are thicker: whatever smell they may have had is lost, and there is no gloss upon them. It might be supposed that the gloss has been worn off; but this is not the case, for most of the tables have never been written on. Some of the edges being a little worn, show that the middle of the leaf consists of paper; the composition is laid on with great nicety. A silver style was used, which is sheathed in one of the covers, and which produces an impression as distinct, and as easily obliterated as a black-lead pencil. The tables are interleaved with common paper.”