- Note: on walls, plastered, or unsuited for carving, sgraffito might be used with fine effect.
- Letters may also be painted upon cemented into the wall (p. [377]).
All the arts employ lettering directly or indirectly, in fine decoration or for simple service.
The following list of ancient uses is interesting:[90]—
- “I. TITULI
- 1. Dedicatory and Votive Inscriptions (Tituli Sacri).
- 2. Sepulchral Inscriptions (Tituli Sepulchrales).
- 3. Honorary Inscriptions (Tituli Honorarii).
- 4. Inscriptions on Public Works (Tituli Operum Publicorum).
- 5. Inscriptions on Movable Objects (Instrumentum).
- II. INSTRUMENTA
- 1. Laws (Leges et Plebi Scita).
- 2. Decrees of the Senate (Senatus Consulta).
- 3. Imperial Documents (Instrumenta Imperatorum).
- 4. Decrees of Magistrates (Decreta Magistratuum).
- 5. Sacred and Public Documents (Acta Sacra et Publica).
- 6. Private Documents (Acta Privata).
- 7. Wall Inscriptions (Inscriptiones Parietariae).
- 8. Consular Diptychs (Diptycha Consularia).”
MS. BOOKS, &C.
Books in the making—as compared with ordinary inscriptions—are capable of great compression or expansion, and may be said to have a quality of elasticity. Nearly all other ordinary inscriptions are set inscriptions (p. [350]), requiring a given number of words to be set out in a given space. But in books, while it is convenient that the treatment of the text should conform generally to a chosen size of page (p. [103]), the contents of the page may vary according to the letter-form and the spacing (pp. [107], [262]), and the number of the pages is not definitely limited, so that another page, or a [p342] number of additional pages, may always be taken to complete the text.
The size of page, margin, and writing having been settled (see Chap. VI.)—and the pages ruled—the penman writes out the text with the utmost freedom, not stopping to make fine calculations, but leaving such spaces and lines, for Initials, Headings, &c., as his fancy and common-sense dictate, and letting the text—or its divisions—smoothly flow on from page to page till a natural termination is reached. And if the terminal page has only one or two lines on it, it is not necessary to attempt a balance with the previous page—the book or chapter[91] ends just there, for the good reason that there is no more of it.
Colophons, Tail-pieces, &c. (see p. [142]), make a pleasant finish, and may complete the page or not as convenient.
Planning: Sections and Pages.—Calculations of the amount of text, of the number of sections or pages required, and so on, are useful, and planning the pages may be convenient—for example, one or more of the verses of a poem, or a given number of words, may be allotted to the page—provided always that the scribe preserves his freedom, and treats each case on its merits. If he think it most suitable to devote a complete page to each paragraph, he may do so in spite of its resulting in the pages all being of different lengths.
The one general limitation which it is proper to [p343] observe is that of the Writing-line—its length[92] and spacing—and to this may be added the desirability of beginning the text of every page on the first or head line.[93] For most of us it is not practically possible to do without the aid of the writing-lines—which really lead, through uniformity, to greater freedom—though a book written without them[94] might be as beautiful as any ruled manuscript.