These specimens of book-making during the period of its transition from writing to printing, give us some notions of the estimation in which the process of printing was held by the men who manufactured chap-books. It does not appear that they made use of printing because they thought it was a labor-saving process. They used it mainly, if not entirely, to supplement the deficient skill of the copyist. It was then as it is now—many could write, but few could draw. If the copyist who wrote the text had been competent to draw, the pictures would not have been engraved. Nor would these engravings have been made for one nor even for one dozen copies. We may properly suppose that enough copies were printed to justify the expense of engraving. While it was expedient to engrave the pictures, it was inexpedient to engrave the text of a book. In many books, the letters constituted the largest part of the work, and to the engraver it was the more difficult part—the expense of engraving would more than offset all the advantages that might have been gained from printing. A full suite of blocks for the text would cost more than the writing of a hundred copies. To the stationer who could sell but few books, xylographic printing was not an economical process: the preliminary cost of engraving was too great. It would be an extravagant estimate to assume that the writer of the _Weekly Meditations_ made one hundred copies of this book; but one [p190] hundred copies would have been an edition much too small to justify the engraving of its text of seventeen pages. We must accept this as the reason why printing was so sparingly used by the early book-makers. They did not engrave blocks and print books, because there were not enough book-buyers to warrant the expense. This feature of printing—its entire dependence upon a very large number of book-buyers—may require a more extended explanation.