Hornbook, the primer or apparatus for learning the elements of reading, used in England before the days of printing, and common down to the time of George II. It consisted of a single leaf, containing on one side the alphabet large and small, in black letter or in Roman, with perhaps a small regiment of monosyllables. Then followed a form of exorcism and the Lord's Prayer, and as a finale, the Roman numerals. The leaf was usually set in a frame of wood, with a slice of transparent horn in front—hence the name of horn-book. There was a handle to hold it by, and usually this handle had a hole for a string, whereby the apparatus was slung to the girdle of the scholar. Sometimes the leaf was simply pasted against a slice of horn. At first the leaf was of vellum, with the characters in writing; latterly, of paper, and printed. The hornbook was prefaced and otherwise ornamented with figures of the cross, and hence came to be often called Christ Cross Row, or Criss Cross Row. Common as hornbooks at one time were, copies of them are now exceedingly rare. See the elaborate monograph by A. W. Tuer, the History of the Horn Book, with illustrations and fac-similes (2 vols. 1896); and Halliwell's Fugitive Tracts (1849). Allusions to the hornbook abound in the older writers; thus Shenstone, in his Schoolmistress, tells us of the children, how
Their books of stature small they take in hand,
Which with pellucid horn secured are,
To save from fingers wet the letters fair.