It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the
intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a
middle-class English home, such as the present writer is now working in, with
the inconveniences and deficiencies of the equipment of an Alexandrian writer,
and one realizes the enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention
that went on through all the centuries during which that library flourished.
Before the present writer lie half a dozen books, and there are good indices to
three of them. He can pick up any one of these six books, refer quickly to a
statement, verify a quotation, and go on writing. Contrast with the tedious un-
folding of a rolled manuscript. Close at hand are two encyclopedias, a
dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biographical dictionary, and other books of
reference. They have no marginal indices, it is true, but that, perhaps, is
asking too much at present. There were no such resources in the world in 300
B.C. Alexandria had still to produce the first grammar and the first dictionary.
This present book is being written in manuscript; it is then taken by a typist
and typewritten very accurately. It can then, with the utmost convenience, be
read over, corrected amply, rearranged freely, retyped, and recorrected. The
Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every word he wrote. Before he could
turn back to what he had written previously, he had to dry his last words by
waving them in the air or pouring sand over them; he had not even
blotting-paper. Whatever an author wrote had to be recopied again and again
before it could reach any considerable circle of readers, and every copyist
introduced some new error. New books were dictated to a roomful of copyists, and
so issued in a first edition of some hundreds at least. In Rome, Horace and
Virgil seem to have been issued in quite considerable editions. Whenever a need
for maps or diagrams arose, there were fresh difficulties. Such a science as
anatomy, for example, depending as it does upon accurate drawing, must have been
enormously hampered by the natural limitations of the copyist. The transmission
of geographical fact again must have been almost incredibly tedious. No doubt a
day will come when a private library and writing desk of the year A.D. 1925 will
seem quaintly clumsy and difficult; but, measured by the standards of
Alexandria, they are astonishingly quick, efficient, and economical of nervous
and mental energy. This passage chiefly describes ______.
A．the inconveniences and deficiencies of an Alexandrian writer B．the development of writing and publishing since Alexandrian Times C．the conveniences and sufficiency’s of modern writers D．the similarities and differences between Ancient and Modern Times