Minimized Writing.
Mention was made in the Table, not long since, of the microscopic ring presented to Queen Elizabeth, consisting of a silver penny on which Bales "put more things than would fill several duodecimo pages." For a long time, Pliny's remark that Cicero had once seen Homer's Iliad in a nutshell was considered an exaggeration, at least. But an old French writer named Huet proves the statement to be true. A sheet of sheep-skin 10x8 can be neatly folded up so as to fit the shell of a large walnut. In its breadth the strip will contain one line of thirty verses, and in its length, 250 lines. Each side of the page would, then, contain 7500 verses, or the whole of the Iliad! Huet proved this fact in the presence of the Dauphin, using a sheet of paper and a crow-quill pen.
In the library of St. John's College, Oxford, is a head of Charles I. made up of minute lines of script which at a little distance resemble common engraving lines. The lines of the head and ruff form the Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. There is a portrait of Queen Anne in the British Museum "not much above the size of the hand." This drawing, too, is made up of microscopic lines and scratches which form the contents of an entire folio!
Elizabeth's silver penny ring was surpassed by the farthing of Peter Almunus, an Italian monk. On the coin were engrossed the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to St. John. Another example of microscopic writing was presented to Elizabeth in the shape of a piece of parchment the size of a finger, containing the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the name of the giver, and the date. A pair of spectacles accompanied this Lilliputian manuscript.
Ælian tells us of an artist who wrote a "distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn," while Menage writes of microscopic sentences, pictures, and portraits. He mentions reading an Italian poem in praise of the Princess, "written by an officer in the space of a foot and a half."
With Pope we would say:
"Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason—man is not a fly."
Maurice Maxwell.