Livre d

’Heures” of Anthony Vérard (1488), representing the Assumption of the Virgin in the presence of the Apostles and Holy Women, and at the bottom of the page two Mystical Figures.]

The book, on leaving the press, went, like its predecessor the manuscript, first into the hands of the _corrector_, who revised the text, rectifying wrong letters, and restoring those the press had left in blank; then into the hands of the _rubricator_, who printed in red, blue, or other colours, the initial letters, the capitals, and the new paragraphs. The leaves, before the adoption of signatures, were numbered by hand.

At first, nearly all books were printed in folio and quarto sizes, the result of folding the sheet of paper in two or in four respectively; but the length and breadth of these sizes varied according to the requirements of typography and the dimensions of the press. At the end of the fifteenth century, however, the advantages of the octavo were already appreciated, which soon became in France the sex-decimo, and in Italy the duo-decimo.

[Illustration: Fig. 413.--Border taken from the “ Livre d ’Heures” of Geoffroi Tory (1525).]

Paper and ink employed by the earliest printer seem to have required no improvement as the art of printing progressed.

[Illustration: Fig. 414--“