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he convinced himself that each letter was painted, or drawn in the same manner as the initial letters in several of the finest missals. He seems also doubtful, whether to call the leaves vellum, parchment or papyrus.

We come now to paper. The most ancient kind was made from the papyrus, whence the word paper is derived. This is a species of rush, which the ancients procured exclusively on the banks of the Nile. The particular species, till lately, was not known; but it is now ascertained to be the cyperus papyrus of Linnæus, growing on the banks of different rivers in the east, and likewise, we believe, in Trinidad. The term biblos, originally applied by the Greeks to the inner bark of trees, and equivalent to the liber of the Romans, was afterwards more usually applied to the papyrus. Thence the term was transferred to books in general; and now it is confined by us to the scripture, as the book.

It is not known when the papyrus was first manufactured into paper; but there were certainly at a very early period, at least three hundred years before Alexander, manufactories of it at Memphis. Afterwards, and at the time of the conquest of Egypt, by the Romans, it was made chiefly at Alexandria. Till this conquest, however, the paper was of inferior quality. The Roman artists paid great attention to its improvement, and at length made it of considerable thickness, perfectly white and smooth. Even in this state, however, it was so friable and weak, that, when great durability was requisite, leaves of parchment were intermixed with those of papyrus. "Thus the firmness of the one substance defended the brittleness of the other, and great numbers of books, so constituted, have resisted the accidents and decays of twelve centuries."

The papyrus was highly useful to the ancient Egyptians, on many accounts, besides that of supplying them with paper: from the pith they extracted a sweet and nutritive juice; from the harder and lower parts they formed cups, &c.; staves, and ribs of boats, from the upper and more flexible part; and the fibrous part was manufactured into cloth, sails, ropes, strings, shoes, wicks for lamps, and paper. Pliny gives a full description of the manner in which it was made by the ancients; and Bruce, who succeeded in making it, both in Abyssinia and Egypt, has offered se

veral very curious observations on the natural history of the papyrus, in the seventh vol. of his Travels, 8vo. edition, page 117, &c. In one point he differs from the account given by Pliny, of the mode of manufacturing paper from it. According to the latter, one layer of the fibrous coats of the plant was laid across another layer, on a table; they were then connected together by the muddy water of the Nile. Mr. Bruce affirms, that the water of the Nile is in no degree glutinous, and that the strips of papyrus adhere together solely by means of the saccharine matter, with which the juice of the plant is abundantly impregnated. He adds, that the Nile water must have been used simply to dissolve this saccharine matter, perfectly and equally. The cemented fibres were pressed, dried, beat with a mallet, and polished with a tooth, shell, or other smooth and solid substance. The Roman artists, in Alexandria, paid great attention to the operations of washing, beating, glueing, sizing, and polishing. It was sized in the same manner as paper from rags is at present. After the first sizing, it was beat with a hammer; sized the second time, pressed, and then polished. It was then cut into various sizes,-never more, however, according to Pliny, than thirteen inches wide. The same author mentions a great variety of kinds, to each of which a specific name was given.

For at least three hundred years before Christ, this article was exported in large quantities from Egypt. Of the extent and value of the manufactures, in Alexandria, and of the wealth derived from them, we may form some idea from an anecdote of Firmus. This person, the friend and ally of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, a wealthy merchant, or rather manufacturer of paper and glue, in Alexandria, broke into that city in the middle of the third century, at the head of a furious multitude, "assumed the imperial purple, coined money, published edicts, and raised an army, which he boasted he could maintain from the sole profits of his manufactures." The time when the manufacture of this paper was lost, or superseded, is not known. The possession of Egypt by the Saracens certainly interrupted and diminished its manufacture and export; and it is generally supposed that few, if any, ma nuscripts on papyrus are of a later date than the eighth or ninth century. About this period, cotton paper was first made:

according to some, in Bucharia; according to others, it had been known long before in China and Persia. There is no doubt, however, that the Arabs, having gained a knowledge of the process, established a manufactory at Ceuta, and afterwards in Spain; and thus introduced it into Europe, about the twelfth century. In the next century this paper was in common use in the eastern empire, and in Sicily. At first it was made of raw cotton; then of old wornout cotton cloth. While the paper manufactories of Spain were possessed by the Arabians, this article was of a very coarse and inferior quality, in consequence of their employing only mortars, and hand or horse-mills, to reduce the wool or cloth to a pulp; but as soon as their Christian labourers got possession of the paper mills of Toledo and Valencia, they worked them to more advantage, by the use of water-mills, an improved method of grinding and stamping, and by the invention or adoption of moulds. The use of cotton paper became general only in the thirteenth century; and about the middle of the fourteenth, it was almost entirely superseded by paper from linen rags, such as is at present made and used in Europe, and wherever Europeans have settled or colonised. There is much uncertainty respecting the exact time when linen paper was invented, and in what country. It is probable that at first a mixture of cotton and linen rags was employed, especially in those countries, where flax was much and easily cultivated, and where cotton was an article of import, and consequently scarce and dear. Montfauçon, who, on these subjects, is great authority on account of the diligence and extent of his researches, could find no books, either in France or Italy, made of linen paper, before the year 1270. A specimen little earlier, however, in 1239, has been discovered by De Vaines. In the fourteenth century, the use of this kind of paper became general. Italy seems to have had paper manufactures, for exportation, at this time. In 1380, part of the cargo of a ship, from Genoa to Sluys, in Flanders, which was driven ashore on the coast of England, consisted of twenty-two bales of writing paper. The oldest German paper-mill was erected at Nuremberg, in 1390. There are English manuscripts, on linen paper, so early as 1340 and 1342; but the manufacture was not introduced, according to the general opinion, into

a

this country, till the year 1588. At that
time a German, named Spielman, jewel-
ler to Queen Elizabeth, erected a paper-
mill at Dartford, in Kent. This opinion,
however, has been controverted on good
grounds; as the paper used by Wynkyn
de Worde (who may justly be considered
as Caxton's real successor) for Bar-
tholomeus, de proprietatibus rerum—de-
66 as one of the
scribed by Mr. Dibdin,
most splendid typographical productions
of the early British press," was made
at Hertford by John Tate, junior, who
may therefore be deemed the earliest
paper-maker in England.* Our prin-
cipal supply of fine paper, for printing
and writing, was from the Continent-
(Holland and France chiefly)-till about
one hundred years since. At this period
two-thirds of the paper used was home
made; at present, besides manufacturing
sufficient for our own use, we export it

to a considerable amount.

The instruments employed to write with, by the ancients, and in the dark and middle ages, of course varied according to the nature of the materials on which they wrote. They may be divided into two kinds: those which acted immediately, and those which acted by the assistance of fluids; of the first kind were the wedge and chisel, for inscriptions on stone, wood, and metal; and the style, for wax tablets. The last has been already mentioned and described; the others need no description. As the style was too sharp for writing on parchment and Egyptian paper, and moreover, was not adapted for holding or conveying a fluid, a species of reed was employed. The Egyptian reeds were preferred, but many others were also used. They were cut in the form of our modern pens, and split in the points; when they became blunt, they were sharpened either with a knife, or on a rough stone. Persons of rank and fortune often wrote with a calamus of silver-something probably like our silver pens. However carefully made or mended, the strokes made by the reed-pens were in general coarse and uneven. Both the styles and the reeds were carefully kept in cases. From ancient authors, as well as from the figures in manuscripts, we learn that they used a sponge to cleanse the reed, and to rub out such letters as were writ

* John Tate, the younger

Which late hath in England do make this paper thynne,

That now in our English, this boke is printed

[blocks in formation]

ten by mistake; a knife for mending the reed; pumice, for a similar purpose, or to smooth the parchment; compasses for measuring the distances of the lines; scissars, for cutting the paper; a puncher, to point out the beginning and end of each line; a rule, to draw lines, and divide the sheets into columns; a glass, containing sand, and another glass filled with water, probably to mix with the ink.

Neither the particular species of calamus, used as pens by the ancients, nor the manner in which they prepared them for this purpose, is known. This is remarkable, since all the places, where these reeds grow wild, have been ascertained, and explored by botanists: with so little success, however, that after a variety of learned as well as scientific conjectures, the calamus of the ancients has not yet found a place in the botanical system of Linneus.

This is yet more remarkable, as reeds are still employed by many eastern nations to write with. Ranwolf, who travelled in the sixteenth century, informs us that canes for pens were sold in the shops of Turkey, small, hollow within, smooth without, and of a brownish colour. Tavernier, Chardin, Tournefort, and other travellers, give a similar account, adding, that the reeds are about the size of large swan quills, and are cut and split in the same manner that we do quills, except that their nib is much larger. The best grow near the Persian Gulph. It is highly probable, that, of whatever species these are, they are of the same as those employed by the ancients; and that the mode of preparing them, still practised in the east, was followed by the ancients. They are put for some months in a dunghill; this gives them a dark yellow colour, a fine polish, and the requisite hardness.

Reeds continued to be used even so late as the eighth century, though there can be no doubt that quill pens were known in the middle of the seventh. The earliest author who uses the word penna for a writing pen, is Isidorus, who lived in that century; and towards the latter end of the same century, a Latin sonnet to a pen was written by an AngloSaxon author. There is, indeed, in the Medicean Library, a MS. of Virgil, written in the beginning of the 5th century, evidently, from the gradual and regular fineness of the hair strokes, by some instrument as elastic as a quill; but there is no proof that it was really

written with a quill. Considering that pens from quills were certainly known in the seventh century, they must have come into general use very slowly; for in 1433, a present of a bundle of quills was sent from Venice by a monk, with a letter, in which he says, "Shew the bundle to Brother Nicholas, that he may choose a quill."

The composition and the colours of the ink used by the ancients were various. Lamp-black, or the black taken from burnt ivory, and soot from furnaces and baths, according to Pliny and other writers, formed the basis of it: the black liquor of the cuttle fish is also said to have been used as ink, principally on the authority of a metaphorical expression of the poet Persius. But of whatever ingredients it was made, it is certain, from chemical analysis, from the solidity and blackness in the most ancient manuscripts, and from an inkstand found at Herculaneum, in which the ink appears like a thick oil, that the ink then made was much more opaque as well as encaustic than that used at present. Inks, red, purple and blue, and also silver and gold inks, were much employed by the ancients; the red was made from vermilion, cinnabar, and carmine; the purple from the murex; one kind of this coloured ink, called the sacred encauster, was set apart for the sole use of the emperors. The subscription at the end of most Greek manuscripts, containing the name of the copyist, and the year, month, day, and sometimes hour, when he finished his labour, were generally written, in the period of the Lower Empire, in purple ink. Golden ink was used by the Greeks much more than by the Romans. The manufacture both of it and silver ink was a distinct and extensive, as well as a lucrative business in the middle ages; and another distinct business was that of inscribing the titles, capitals or emphatic words, in coloured and gold or silver inks.

CHAPTER III.

Manuscript Books-where written and copied, and by whom-Causes of their Destruction or Loss-their Rarity and high price-LibrariesSchools.

THE foregoing chapter proves very strongly and clearly the obstacles and impediments in the way of the communication and transmission of knowledge"

among the ancients, and in the dark and middle ages, in so far as the nature of the materials employed for those purposes is concerned. Masses of stone or marble, metal, or blocks or planks of wood, were too heavy and cumbrous to circulate in order to learn what the inscriptions on them related to, it was necessary that they should be consulted on the spot. Even after better materials were used, such as tablets, parchment, and the papyrus paper, the difficulties and disadvantages were great. Wax tablets might answer for notes, letters, or very short treaties, but scarcely for writings of any great length. Besides it appears that they were chiefly intended and applied for private use, and never circulated. Parchment never could have been abundant and cheap; and being, at least during the Greek and Roman period, manufactured exclusively or principally, in one place, other parts of the world must have been dependant for their supply upon it. Papyrus paper was cheaper, and in much greater abundance; but for a supply of it, the world was indebted to Egypt alone; and we have seen how this supply was cut off or much diminished when the Saracens obtained possession of that country. The invention of paper from linen rags succeeded. Dr. Robertson remarks that "it preceded the first dawning of letters and improvement in knowledge towards the close of the eleventh century, and that by means of it, not only the number of manuscripts increased, but the study of the sciences was wonderfully facilitated." So far, indeed, as respects material, after this period, the European world was nearly as well off for the means of circulating and transmitting knowledge, as we of the present day are. But we must never lose sight of this fact, that all books were manuscript, written by the hand. How this was accomplished, by whom, and where, form part of the inquiries answered in the present chapter. If we look at the voluminous works of some of the ancient Fathers or schoolmen, we must be struck with astonishment, when we reflect that copies of them were made by the pen alone, and that their circulation, which seems to have been extensive, could not proceed unless the pen supplied copies. From this single fact, we shall be prepared to expect that the copyists of books must, at all times before the invention of printing, have been very numerous; following a regular business, that afforded

full employment, and required experience and skill, as well as legible and expeditious writing.

This was indeed the case in Greece, Rome, Alexandria, and other places before the Christian 'era; and after its establishment, in the monasteries, universities, and many other places. At Athens copyists by profession were numerous, and gained a steady and considerable livelihood, as, notwithstanding their number and labours, books were seldom very common. The booksellers of Athens employed them principally to copy books of amusement, most of which were exported to the adjoining countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, and sometimes even to the Greek colonies on the Euxine. In many of these places the business of copying was carried on, and libraries formed. Individuals also employed themselves, occasionally, in copying; and there are instances recorded of some forming their own libraries by copying every book they wished to put into them. Not long after the death of Alexander, the love of science and literature passed from Athens and Greece generally, to Alexandria, where, patronised by the Ptolemies, they flourished vigorously, and for a considerable period seemed to have concentred themselves. Under the same roof with the celebrated library there, (which is said to have contained at one time 700,000 volumes,) were extensive offices, regularly and completely fitted up for the business of transcribing books: and it was the practice of foreign princes, who wished for copies of books, to maintain copyists in this city. Some of the libraries of Rome, having been destroyed by fire, the Emperor Domitian sent copyists to Alexandria, that he might be able to replace them. This practice continued for some. centuries after Domitian, probably till the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens in the middle of the seventh century. The supposed invention of parchment by a king of Pergamus has already been mentioned. This is doubtful; but it is certain that there were extensive manufactories of that article there, almost entirely for the use of the copyists, who were attached to the royal library; this is said to have contained 200,000 books.

We are ignorant of the class of people in ancient Grecce, by whom the business of copying was chiefly followed, and of the education they received. But

:

we know, that, in Rome, the copyists were usually slaves who had received a liberal education. Sometimes they were freedmen, especially those employed by private individuals. The Romans, of rank and consequence, seldom wrote their works, speeches, or even letters themselves;-it was customary for them to dictate to such of their slaves or freedmen, as had been liberally educated, who wrote the MS. in a kind of short hand, or rather in contractions and signs which stood for words and syllables. If the work was intended for publication, it was sent to the booksellers who employed people to copy it fairly in the ordinary characters. This kind of short hand is said to have been invented by Xenophon it was certainly much extended and improved by the Romans. Tyro, Cicero's freedman, in copying the speeches of Cato, first regulated the method of taking down public harangues -hence their note took his name, Note Tyroniana; they were in use in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Many of the speeches of Cicero and other distinguished statesmen and orators, in the senate or at the forum, were taken down by short-hand writers stationed there. Extreme rapidity of writing was absolutely necessary this led them to contract words more and more, and to multiply the number of the contractions. In many cases, either for the sake of greater expedition, or of secrecy, "signs or marks which could be currently made with one dash or scratch of the style, and without lifting or turning it, came to be employed, instead of those letters which were themselves abbreviations of words. This mode of dictation, and of rapid and abbreviated writing, continued to be practised, at least as late as the fourth century."

This, itself, must have occasioned many errors; but the chief source of errors in the MSS. of the ancients arose

from the transcribers employed by the booksellers; these were often ignorant and careless; and complaints on that score are made against them, at a very early period, by Lucilius, in one of his satires, and afterwards by Cicero, Strabo, Martial, and other authors. Strabo informs us that in his time the copyists were so careless that they neglected to compare what they wrote with the exemplar: this, he adds, has been the case in many works copied for sale, at Rome and exandria. Individuals seldom copied

for their own use at Rome. Plu

tarch, indeed, mentions, that Cato the Censor, out of his great anxiety for the education of his son, wrote out, for his use, with his own hand, in large letters, such historical works as he wished him to read; but this is evidently noticed as an extraordinary and unusual action. When a person, from the absence of his scribe or other cause, wrote his letters himself, the extreme rapidity to which he had been accustomed while dictating, unavoidably produced rapid and illegible writing. Cicero, in reply to the com. plaint of his brother Quintus, that he could not read his letters, tells him that when he wrote himself, he wrote with whatever pen he took up, whether good or bad *.

When the seat of the Roman empire was transferred to Constantinople, that city, for upwards of one thousand years, became the chief seat of literature, and source of books. The liberality and munificence of the emperors in purchas ing books, and having them copied, are repeatedly noticed, especially by the Byzantine historians. The manuscripts executed in that city are, in general, beautifully written, and sometimes most splendidly decorated. Though the number of books, and the demand for them in ancient times, were, comparatively, extremely limited, yet, in consequence of the frequent destruction of manuscripts, by common accidents and casualties, the business of copyists must have been very extensive. When the Roman empire began to decline, their destruction was extended and increased in the midst of the turbulence and rapine of the civil contests for the imperial throne. Christianity, properly understood, and exercising its due influence on the understanding and character, must be a warm friend of knowledge and literature: but the spurious Christianity, believed and acted upon in the dark ages, was hostile to some of the noblest productions of the human mind. The temples of the Heathens, with the public libraries they contained, were the objects of vengeance and destruction. The classics were represented as sinful books. In addition to these causes, the capture of Rome in the fifth century,-the devastations committed by Alaric, Genseric, and Attila-and the plunder of Milan, which,

Quintilian informs us that wax tablets were preferred to paper, when it was necessary or desirable to write with rapidity, as the pen required to be fre quently raised from the paper, to be dipped in the ink -an intermission and delay not required when writing with the style on tablets,

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