The earlier signs were frequently representations of the most important article sold in the shops before which they hung. The stocking denoted the hosier, the gridiron the ironmonger, and so on. The early booksellers, whose trade lay chiefly in religious books, delighted in signs of saints, but at the Reformation the BIBLE amongst those classes, to whom till then it had been a sealed book, became in great request, and was sold in large numbers. Then the booksellers set it up for their sign; it became the popular symbol of the trade, and at the present moment instances of its use still linger with us. There was one day in the year, St Bartholomew’s, the 24th of August, when their shops displayed nothing but Bibles and Prayer-books. It is not impossible that this may have been originally intended for a manifestation against Popery, since it was the anniversary of the dreadful Protestant massacre in Paris in 1572. The following, however, is the only allusion we have met with relating to this custom:--“Like a bookseller’s shop on Bartholomew day at London, the stalls of which are so adorned with Bibles and Prayer-books, that almost nothing is left within but heathen knowledge.”[366] One of the last BIBLE signs was about twenty years ago, at a public-house in Shire Lane, Temple Bar. It was an old established house of call for printers. The Bible being such a common sign, booksellers had to “wear their rue with a difference,” as Ophelia says, and adopt different colours, amongst which the BLUE BIBLE was one of the most common. “Prynne’s Histrio-Mastrix” was “printed for Michael Sparke, and sold at the Blue Bible, in Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey, 1632.” This blue colour, so common on the signboard, was not chosen without meaning, but on account of its symbolic virtue. Blue, from its permanency, being an emblem of truth, hence Lydgate, speaking of Delilah, Samson’s mistress, in his translation from Boccacio, (MS. Harl. 2251,) says-- “Insteade of _blew, which steadfaste is and clene_, She weraed colours of many a diverse grene.” It also signified piety and sincerity. Randle Holme[367] says-- “This colour, _blew_, doth represent the sky on a clear, sun-shining day, when all clouds are exiled. Job, speaking to the busy searchers of God’s mysteries, saith (Job xi. 17,) ‘That then shall the residue of their lives be as clear as the noonday.’ Which to the judgment of men (through the pureness of the air) is of _azure_ colour or light _blew_, and signifieth _piety and sincerity_.”