It may be well here to review rapidly how it is that we have acquired an alphabet for printing purposes which is clear, though not beautiful. Our present type shows two alphabets; one, the capital letters, are of Roman origin, the other, the small letters, are a modification of what are called Carolingian minuscules, and both alphabets have reached us through the Latin, Greek, Phœnician and Semitic.
Up to the seventh or eighth centuries in Europe the various styles of writing were in a mixed condition, but about that time the different forms of letters began to arrange themselves, and to follow distinctive lines of development in different countries.
Charlemagne interested himself in the matter, and saw that the time had arrived when something could be done towards clearing away the many difficulties which cropped up by reason of the different forms of letters which then existed. He caused careful studies to be made of existing styles so that some sort of common ground could be found. At Tours the Emperor set up a sort of Royal Commission to enquire into the matter, and at the head of it he placed a learned Englishman, Alcuin of York, who was known as a great student and was himself a calligraphist. Alcuin was trained in the beautiful Hiberno-Saxon hand, of which so many magnificent examples still remain—the Book of Kells, the Gospels of Lindisfarne, and several more.
At Tours the Carolingian minuscules, which are the direct ancestors of our small, or lower-case letters, were developed.
Our capital letters have developed themselves on different lines. They are like the ancient Roman types, which in the twelfth century had modified themselves somewhat and become very clear, and these forms commended themselves to the scribes of the Renaissance period, and underwent still more improvement in details. The early type cutters who formed their letters directly after the shapes of letters written by hand, soon saw that these capitals were not only easy to cut but were in every way the best they could find to copy.
Fig. 12.—Roman diptych.
During some excavations at Pompeii in 1875 a large collection of small wax writing tablets or Pugillaria was found. These tablets resemble small slates; they are of wood, and one side is slightly hollowed out so as to receive a filling of blackened wax. Generally two of the tablets were hinged together, hence their name of diptychs, but sometimes they were in threes or even more, like a tail or “Caudex,” from which it is said we derive our word Codex. Diptychs are the direct prototypes of our modern books.
The writing was marked on the wax by means of a style in the same way that writing was formerly done in England on the curious sand tables. These styles are usually of iron, sometimes inlaid with brass, but they were also made of bronze, brass, wood or bone. They always have one end pointed to write with and the other flat to erase with. A space was often left in the thickness of the wooden edge of a diptych to keep the style in. The erasing in the case of the diptych was effected by rubbing the flat end of the style over it, and in the case of the sand writing-tablet by a plasterer’s level or a good shake. Sand tablets have been used up to quite recent times in elementary schools. But the sand writing was always temporary, whereas the wax writing is very lasting, one of those found at Pompeii bearing the date A.D. 55. It records a payment to Umbricia Januaria, and is the earliest Latin manuscript known.