Note (return) — THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

The inner bark of the linden or teil tree, and perhaps of some others, railed by the Romans liber, by the Greeks biblos,4 was so generally used as a material for writing as to have given its name to a book in both languages. Tables of solid wood called codices, whence the term codex for a manuscript on any material, has passed into common use, were also employed, but chiefly for legal documents, on which account a system of laws came to be called a code. Leaves or tablets of lead or ivory are frequently mentioned by ancient authors as in common use for writing. But no material or preparation seems to have been so frequently employed on ordinary occasions as tablets covered with a thin coat of coloured wax, which was readily removed by an iron needle, called a style; and from which the writing was as readily effaced by the blunt end of the same instrument.