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PALÆOGRAPHY
NOTES UPON THE
HISTORY OF WRITING
AND THE
MEDIEVAL ART OF ILLUMINATION
BY
Bernard Quaritch
Extended from a Lecture, delivered at a Conversazione of the Sette
of Odd Volumes, at the Galleries of the Royal Institute of
Painters in Water Colours, 12th December, 1893
London
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1894
This Volume is
Dedicated to my excellent friend
Brother Alexander T. Hollingsworth,
ARTIFICER, and PRESIDENT OF
The Odd Volumes, 1893-94,
AND TO
THE BRETHREN OF THE SETTE
WITH WHICH
I have been united since 1878 in O. V. bond,
BY
BERNARD QUARITCH,
Librarian to the Sette.
London, 15 Piccadilly, March 31st, 1894.
Of the books which preceded the invention of Printing, a much larger quantity is still extant than the world in general would suppose, but they are nevertheless so widely scattered and so seldom immediately accessible, that only a very long experience will enable any one to speak or to write about them in other than a blundering fashion. So many qualifications are required, that it may seem presumptuous in me to treat upon a matter bristling with difficulties and uncertainties. The brief but admirable outline of its history which Mr. Maunde Thompson has lately published is likely to mislead the inexperienced into a belief that a science defined with so much clearness and apparent ease may as easily be mastered. No one knows better than that accomplished scholar how hard it would be to supply sure and definite criteria for the guidance of palæograp