observes that the frequent necessity of dipping the pen in the inkstand
retards the hand, and is but ill-suited to the celerity of the mind.
Some of these table-books are conjectured to have been large, and
perhaps heavy, for in Plautus, a school-boy is represented breaking his
master's head with his table-book. The critics, according to Cicero,
were accustomed in reading their wax manuscripts to notice obscure or
vicious phrases by joining a piece of red wax, as we should underline
such by red ink.

Table-hooks written upon with styles were not entirely laid aside in
Chaucer's time, who describes them in his Sompner's tale:--

His fellow had a staffe tipp'd with horne,
_A paire of tables all of iverie_;
And a _pointell polished_ fetouslie,
And wrote alwaies the names, as he stood,
Of all folke, that gave hem any good.[10]

By the word _pen_ in the translation of the Bible we must understand an
iron _style_. Table-books of ivory are still used for memoranda, written
with black-lead pencils. The Romans used ivory to write the edicts of
the senate on, with a black colour; and the expression of _libri
elephantini_, which some authors imagine alludes to books that for their
_size_ were called _elephantine_, were most probably composed of ivory,
the tusk of the elephant: among the Romans they were undoubtedly scarce.

The _pumice stone_ was a writing-material of the ancients; they used it
to smoothe the roughness of the parchment, or to sharpen their reeds.

In the progress of time the art of writing consisted in _painting_ with