CHAPTER V

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ANCIENT METHODS OF WRITING, AND THE MATERIALS OF BOOKS.

As our present inquiry relates to _Books_, it will not be expected to include anything concerning ancient methods of engraving inscriptions upon marbles, metals, or precious stones. Yet it should be remembered that a knowledge of inscriptions is often highly important, as furnishing subsidiary and independent means of determining the age of manuscripts, as indicated by the character of the writing. For as there are extant almost innumerable specimens of writing upon the more durable materials, and as these specimens belong to every age from the very earliest times, and as such inscriptions usually contain, either an explicit date, or some allusion to public persons or events, they serve to determine, beyond doubt, the successive changes that have taken place in the form of letters, and in the modes of writing.

MATERIALS OF ANCIENT BOOKS.

No material for books has, perhaps, a higher claim to antiquity than the skin of the calf or goat, tanned soft, and which usually was dyed red or yellow: the skins, when thus prepared, were most often connected in lengths, sometimes of a hundred feet, sufficient to contain an entire work; or one _book_ of a history or treatise, which then formed a roll, or _volume_. These soft skins seem to have been more in use among the Jews and other Asiatics than among the people of Europe. The copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, found in the synagogues of the Jews, are often of this kind: the most ancient manuscripts extant are some copies of the Pentateuch, on rolls of crimson leather.

Parchment--Pergamena, so called long after the time of its first use, from Pergamus, a city of Mysia, where the manufacture was improved and carried on to a great extent, is mentioned by Herodotus and Ctesias, as a material which had been from time immemorial used for books. It has proved itself to be, of all others, except that above mentioned, the most durable. The greater part of all those manuscripts, now in our hands, that are of higher antiquity than the sixth century, are on parchment; as well as, generally, all carefully written, and curiously decorated manuscripts, of later times. The palimpsests, mentioned in a preceding chapter, are usually parchments.

The practice, which is still followed in the East, of writing upon the leaves of trees, is of great antiquity. The leaves of the mallow, or of the palm, were those the most used for this purpose; sometimes they were wrought together so as to form larger surfaces; but it is probable that so fragile and inconvenient a material was employed rather for ordinary purposes of business, letter-writing, and the instruction of children, than for books, intended for preservation.

The inner bark of the linden or teil tree, and perhaps of some others, called by the Romans _Liber_, by the Greeks _Biblos_, was so generally used as a material for writing, as to have given its name to _a book_, in both languages. Tables of solid wood called _codices_--whence the term _codex_, for a manuscript, on any material, has passed into common use--were also employed; but this was chiefly for legal documents, on which account a system of laws came to be called--a Code. Leaves or tablets of lead, or of ivory, are frequently mentioned by ancient authors as in common use for writing. But no material or preparation seems to have been so frequently employed, on ordinary occasions, as tablets covered with a thin coat of coloured wax, which might be readily removed by an iron needle, called a _style_; and from which the writing was as easily effaced, by applying the blunt end of the same instrument.

But during many ages the article most in use, and of which the consumption was so great as to form a principal branch of the commerce of the Mediterranean, was that which was manufactured from the papyrus of Egypt. Many manuscripts written upon this kind of paper in the sixth, and some even so early as the fourth century, are still extant. It formed the material of by far the larger proportion of all books from very early times till about the seventh or eighth century, when it gradually gave place to a still more convenient manufacture--our modern paper.

The papyrus, or reed of Egypt, grew in vast quantities in the stagnant pools that were formed by the annual inundations of the Nile. The plant consists of a single stem, rising sometimes to the height of ten cubits: this stem, gradually tapering from the root, supports a spreading tuft at its summit. The substance of the stem is fibrous, and the pith contains a sweet juice. Every part of this plant was put to some use by the Egyptians--so ingenious and so industrious as they were. The harder and lower part they formed into cups and other utensils; the upper part into staves, or the ribs of boats: the sweet pith was a common article of food; while the fibrous part of the stem was manufactured into cloth, sails for ships, ropes, strings, shoes, baskets, wicks for lamps, and, especially, into paper. For this purpose the fibrous coats of the plant were peeled off, throughout the whole length of the stem. One layer of fibres was then laid across another upon a block, and being moistened, the glutinous juice of the plant formed a cement, sufficiently strong to give coherence to the fibres; when greater solidity was required, a size made from bread or glue was employed. The two films being thus connected, were pressed, dried in the sun, beaten with a broad mallet, and then polished with a shell. This texture was cut into various sizes, according to the use for which it was intended, varying from thirteen, to four fingers’ breadth, and of proportionate length.

By progressive improvements, which were made especially when the manufacture came into the hands of the Roman artists, this Egyptian paper was at length brought to a high degree of perfection. In later ages it was made of considerable thickness--perfect whiteness, and an entire continuity and smoothness of surface. Nevertheless, it was, at the best, so friable, that when durability was required, the copyists inserted a page of parchment between every five or six pages of the papyrus. Thus the firmness of the one substance defended the brittleness of the other; and great numbers of books, constituted in this manner, have resisted the accidents and decays of twelve centuries.

Three hundred years before the Christian era, the commerce in the paper of Egypt had extended over most parts of the civilised world; and long afterwards it continued to be a principal source of wealth to the Egyptians. But at length the invention of another material, and also that interruption of commerce which ensued in consequence of the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, banished the Egyptian paper from common use. Comparatively few manuscripts on this material are found of later date than the eighth or ninth century; although it continued to be occasionally used long afterwards.

The charta bombycina, or cotton paper, which has often improperly been called _silk_ paper, had unquestionably been manufactured in the East as early as the ninth century, and probably much earlier; and in the tenth century it came into general use throughout Europe. Not long afterwards, this invention was made still more available for general purposes by the substitution of old linen, or cotton rags, for the raw material; for by this means both the price of the article was reduced, and its quality greatly improved. The cotton paper manufactured in the ancient mode is still used in the East, and is a beautiful fabric; it is also extensively used in the United States.

From this account of the materials successively employed for books, it will be obvious, that a knowledge of the changes which these several manufactures underwent from age to age, will often make it easy, and especially when employed in subservience to other evidence, to fix with certainty the date of manuscripts; or at the least, to furnish infallible means for detecting fabricated documents.

The preservation of books, framed as they are of materials so destructible, through a period of twelve, or even fifteen hundred years, is a fact which might seem almost incredible; especially so as the decay of far more durable substances, within a much shorter period, is continually presented to our notice. Yet so it is, that while the massive walls of the monasteries of the middle ages are often seen prostrate, and their materials fast mingling with the soil, the manuscripts, penned within them, or perhaps at a time when these stones were yet in the quarry, are still fair and perfect, and glitter with their gold and silver, their cerulean and their cinnabar.

It must be remembered, however, that the materials of books, although destructible, are so far from being in themselves perishable, that so long as they are defended from positive injuries, they appear to suffer scarcely at all from any intrinsic principle of decay, or to be liable to any perceptible process of chemical decomposition. No one, says Mabillon, unless totally unacquainted with what relates to antiquity, can call in question the great durability of parchments; since there are extant innumerable books, written on that material, in the seventh and sixth centuries; and some of a still more remote antiquity, by which all doubt on that subject might be removed. It may suffice here to mention the Virgil of the Vatican Library, which appears to be of more ancient date than the fourth century; and another in the King’s Library little less ancient: also the Prudentius, in the same library, of equal age; to which you may add several, already mentioned, as the Psalter of S. Germanus, the Book of the Councils, and others, which are all of parchment.

The paper of Egypt, being more frail and brittle, might be open to greater doubt; and yet there are books of great antiquity, by which its durability may be established.

Books have owed their conservation, not merely to the durability of the material of which they were formed; but to the peculiarity of their being, at once precious, and yet (in periods of general ignorance) not marketable articles; they were of inestimable value to a few, while absolutely worthless in the opinion of the multitude. They were also often indebted for their preservation, in periods of disorder and violence, to the sacredness of the roofs under which they were lodged.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF WRITING, AND INKS.

The instruments used for writing would, of course, be such as were adapted to the material on which they were to be employed. For writing upon the brazen, leaden, or waxed tablets, above mentioned, a needle, called a style, was used, the upper end of which, being smooth and flat, served to obliterate the marks on the tablet, as occasion might require. These styles were at first most often formed of iron or brass; but afterwards of ivory, bone, or wood. Indeed a fatal use having been, on several occasions, made of these pointed weapons by angry partisans in the public courts, the use of iron styles was prohibited; Cæsar, when attacked by the conspirators, is said to have used his iron style as a dagger, and with it to have pierced the arm of one of them: and the story of the Christian schoolmaster, Cassianus, is well known, who is said to have been killed by his scholars, armed with their styles: other similar instances are recorded.

For the purpose of writing with fluid ink, a calamus, formed generally from a reed of the Nile, was used. Persons of distinction often wrote with a calamus of silver. The use of quills seems to have been of ancient date; but long after the time when the fitness of the quill for the purpose of writing had become known, the calamus of reed continued to be preferred. The scalpel, or knife employed for trimming the pen, the compasses, for measuring the distances of the lines, and the scissars, for cutting the paper, are always seen on the desk of the writers in the decorations attached to many ancient manuscripts.

The ink most used by the ancients has been said, but on rather uncertain authority, to have consisted of the black liquor found in the cuttle fish. But it has been proved by chemical analysis that an opaque ink, very different from the mere dye or stain used at present, was commonly employed by the transcribers of books. This opaque ink seems, like the China ink, to have been formed from the finest soot of lamps, in which the purest combustibles were burnt. The coal of ivory, or of the finer woods, powdered, was also in use; these or similar substances, mixed with gums, and diluted with acids, formed a pigment that was much more durable than our modern ink; but it was also far less fluent, and therefore less adapted to a rapid and continuous movement of the pen.

The ink, says Montfaucon, which we see in the most ancient Greek manuscripts, has evidently lost much of its pristine blackness; yet neither has it become altogether yellow or faint, but is rather tawny or deep red, and often is not far from a vermilion. This appears in many manuscripts of the fourth and following centuries. Yet there are some written with an ink more skilfully composed, which have preserved their first blackness. It has happened also, when the surface of the parchment, instead of being polished, was spongy, that the ink has become yellow. In all the bombycine manuscripts, owing to the nature of the material, a separation of the parts of the ink has taken place; the grosser part standing on the surface, while the finer has penetrated the substance of the paper.

Inks of various colours, especially red, purple, and blue, and also gold and silver inks, were much used by the ancients: few manuscripts are destitute of some such ornamental diversities of colour; and many are splendidly recommended to the eye by these means. There was a purple ink, which was appropriated to the use of the emperors, and was called the sacred encaustic; but a dye, not easily distinguished from that which appears upon some imperial charters, is very commonly found in ancient books. And it is said that they must have had a nice sight who could so distinguish between the two as to have detected a violation of the law on this subject. The subscription commonly seen at the end of Greek manuscripts, containing the name of the transcriber, with the year, month, day, indiction, and sometimes the hour when the copy was finished, are most often written in the imperial colour, especially in the times of the lower empire; or if not in that ink, in one that cannot now be distinguished from it.

The titles of chapters were frequently written alternately in red and cerulean: marginal notes, most often in the latter colour. Books of a later date often have all the capitals of a bright green. The Greeks, more frequently than the Romans, used golden ink; and many Greek manuscripts are extant in which, not the titles and capitals only, but whole pages, are elegantly written in a pigment of the precious metals: but it was rather upon ecclesiastical than profane literature that this honour was bestowed. The works of the Fathers, chiefly, were so adorned, and sometimes the Gospels: there is extant a copy of the four Evangelists, written upon purple parchment, in letters of gold throughout. The practice of using gold and silver inks was so common, that the manufacture of them became a distinct business; and those who were skilled in this sort of writing seldom followed any other employment than that of inserting the titles, capitals, or emphatic words, in copies that had been executed by inferior hands. Several curious recipes for the preparation of the precious pigments are given by the later Greek waiters.

Those who have been long accustomed to inspect and examine ancient manuscripts acquire a certain tact in judging of the age of a book from the condition of the ink, its colour and composition, which cannot be explained to others, and for the exercise of which no rules can be laid down. But in cases where a fraud is suspected, this nice habit of the eye often detects at once the imposition. It is perhaps more practicable to give to a picture, than to a manuscript, the hue of antiquity by artificial means.

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