History of the transmission of ancient books to modern times / together with the process of historical proof; or, a concise account of the means by which genuineness of ancient literature generally, and the authenticity of historical works especially are ascertained including incidental remarks upon the relative strength of the evidence usually adduced in behalf of the Holy Scriptures

by Isaac Taylor

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.

CHAPTER VI.
CHANGES INTRODUCED IN THE COURSE OF TIME IN THE FORMS OF LETTERS, AND IN THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF WRITING.

An exact uniformity in the shapes of letters, and in the general appearance of writing, is hardly maintained for so long a period as fifty years in any language, especially if it be widely diffused. Within that space of time, the fashion of our own typography has undergone several changes, so perceptible as to afford a tolerably certain criterion of the date of books. No person, for example, who is familiar with books, would find it difficult, merely from the character of the type, to discriminate the age of works published at the several periods of 1775, 1800, 1825, and 1855. On similar grounds a knowledge of the successive changes introduced by caprice, accident, or a regard to convenience, in the ancient modes of writing, affords an almost certain means of determining the age of manuscripts.

The knowledge requisite for the exercise of this discrimination is derived, in part, from incidental allusions to modes of writing which occur in some ancient authors; but principally from an extensive comparison of manuscripts themselves, and from a comparison of manuscripts with inscriptions upon marbles, brazen tablets, or coins. From these sources may be collected a sufficiently precise idea of the character or fashion of writing prevailing in each century, from the second, to the fifteenth, of the Christian era.

The oldest Greek manuscripts that are extant differ little in the form of the letters, or the general appearance of the writing, from inscriptions belonging to the corresponding periods. They are written in capitals, called uncials, without division of words, and without marks of accentuation or punctuation. About the seventh century, the custom of affixing the accents and aspirates appears to have been introduced; at the same time a greater degree of precision was observed in the formation of the letters, and also in the directness and the parallelism of the lines. To these improvements was added a change in the form of those letters which most impeded the rapid movement of the pen.

In the eighth and ninth centuries a mode of writing, which had been long before practised by notaries and by the secretaries of public persons, was adopted by the transcribers of books. This was a kind of running-hand, those who invented, or who most used it, being called tachygraphoi—swift writers. To adapt the Greek letters to the purpose of public business and common life, the square forms had been changed for curves, and uprights for slopes: and while a radical resemblance to the primitive character was preserved, facility and freedom were obtained.

The uncial character was not, however, altogether abandoned by the copyists; but modifications of it were introduced with a view to obtain greater facility: for the unconnected and upright squares formerly used, seemed still more operose in execution after the running-hand had been adopted. The copyists of the eighth century introduced the practice of commencing books or chapters with a letter of large size, which they usually distinguished by grotesque decorations, somewhat in the manner seen in the printed books of the sixteenth century.

Those who gained their living by copying books found so great an advantage in the adoption of the swift, or tachygraphic character, that they presently sought to improve it by every device that might favour the uninterrupted movement of the pen; not content with joining the letters of each word, they combined them in forms that often bore little or no resemblance to the component characters. The books of the tenth and following centuries abound with these contractions, abbreviations, and symbols. Many entire words of common occurrence were indicated by single turns of the pen. A great part of these contractions were adopted by the first printers, and many of them continued in use until a very recent date.

The manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are distinguished by a degeneracy in the mode of writing, and by a growing abuse of the principle of celerity and facility. To these symptoms of the influence of a mercantile motive, put into activity by an increasing demand for books, may be added the practice of discharging the writing of old parchments, which prevailed at the same period more extensively than heretofore. A vast number of books of this sort, written upon erased parchments, are to be met with, executed in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. In most instances, the first writing is utterly obliterated; yet the marks of the erasure are still evident. Thus in a MS. above described, not a letter, not a point, of the ancient writing remains; but on many of the leaves may be discerned ruled lines, either transverse or perpendicular, which having been deeply impressed upon the parchment could not be effaced; so that those old lines often crossed the new writing. Other pages of the same MS. present no such indications; the leaves having probably been taken from different books. In another MS., executed in the year 1186, though the ancient writing is generally obliterated, yet in a few places, if closely inspected, the ends of the letters may be perceived. In a word, if all the books of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are examined, there will appear to be almost as many written upon erased, as upon new parchments.[1] I am of opinion, that many authors extant in the time of Photius, and even in that of Porphyrogenitus, were utterly destroyed by the prevalence of this pernicious practice. This plague, as it may be termed, spread its devastation among ancient books first in the twelfth century, and continued its ravages during the thirteenth and fourteenth. The same thing is rarely to be observed in bombycine manuscripts: I have met with one book only of this material in which the first writing had been erased, and a second induced. The Greek writers of these times ordinarily erased a better work for the sake of substituting a worse; either one of their own inane productions, or those works of which there is no scarcity among MSS. The extremest ignorance must certainly have pervaded Greece in those times, when what related to ancient history, or to polite learning, was not valued a straw by the writers, who rather than purchase new parchment, destroyed, without scruple, ancient books.

A progression similar to that which took place in Greek writing, distinguishes manuscripts in the Latin language, and affords a like criterion of antiquity. Several manuscripts believed, on good evidence, to belong to the third and fourth centuries, are extant, which present a style of writing nearly allied to that which appears in the inscriptions of the same period. But the uncial character gave place to the small letter at an earlier date among the Roman, than among the Greek copyists; yet they seem to have availed themselves of the change in a much less degree for the purposes of celerity. Indeed, there is little more of continuity, or of abbreviation in the small, than in the large character. Towards the tenth century the Latin scribes adopted a square and heavy character, similar to that which is seen in legal documents. This wide and full-faced letter was so much exaggerated by the writers of the fourteenth century, as almost to blacken the page with its massiveness. Still, a handsome regularity and a fair degree of legibility were maintained. There are, indeed, some manuscripts of this period extant which, for mathematical exactness and beauty, might almost challenge comparison with printed books.

Nothing less, it is obvious, than a long-continued and extensive examination of ancient manuscripts, can confer upon any one such a degree of skill in discriminations of this kind, as might warrant his giving an opinion in a case of difficulty. Yet the mere inspection of a small number of these relics of antiquity may convince any one of the reality and distinctness of those progressive changes in the modes of writing upon which such discriminations are founded. The architecture of different periods is not more characteristic of the age to which it belongs, than is the style of writing in manuscripts; nor is there less certainty in determining questions of antiquity in the one case, than in the other. Particular instances may perplex or deceive the best-informed and the most acute observers; but the greater number of cases admit of no question.