Note x — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 4)

Booksellers appear in the latter part of the twelfth century. Peter of Blois mentions a law book which he had procured a quodam publico mangone librorum. Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. ix. p. 84. In the thirteenth century there were many copyists by occupation in the Italian universities. Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 72. The number of these at Milan before the end of that age is said to have been fifty. Ibid. But a very small proportion of their labour could have been devoted to purposes merely literary. By a variety of ordinances, the first of which bears date in 1275, the booksellers of Paris were subjected to the control of the university. Crevier, t. ii. p. 67, 286. The pretext of this was, lest erroneous copies should obtain circulation. And this appears to have been the original of those restraints upon the freedom of publication, which since the invention of printing have so much retarded the diffusion of truth by means of that great instrument.