Language being a mirror, reflecting all the communicable notions of the people who use it, every mutation in the condition of the people must bring with it, either new terms, or new combinations of words; and as the particular circumstances which introduce such additions or alterations are often known, their occurrence in an author may serve to fix the date of the book, almost with certainty.
Moreover, there is a progression in language itself, independent of any alterations in the objects represented by words. Whenever a vocabulary affords a choice of appellatives, even for immutable objects or notions, the caprices of conversation or of literature—affectation perhaps, or excessive refinement, will, from time to time, occasion a new selection to be made. In all those terms, especially, which either bring with them ideas too familiar to accord with the proprieties of an elevated style, or which are in any degree offensive to delicacy, there will take place a continual, and, sometimes, even a rapid, substitution of new for old phrases—not because the new are in themselves more dignified, or more pure than the old; but because, when first introduced, they are untainted by gross associations or vulgar use.
Every language, therefore, copious specimens of which are extant, and of which the progress is known, contains a latent history of the people through whose lips it has passed, and furnishes to the scholar a series of recondite dates, by means of which literary remains may almost with certainty be assigned to their proper age. This sort of evidence bears the same relation to the history of books, which that derived from the successive changes known to have taken place in the mode of writing bears to the history of manuscripts. It is of a subsidiary kind, and from its very indirectness it often deserves peculiar attention.
We have now seen on what grounds it is, generally, that with reasonable confidence the extant works of ancient authors may be accepted as being such in truth. In presenting this statement of the case, nothing more has been attempted than to offer an outline or brief summary of the argument before us. Certain parts of this argument, as the reader will at once perceive, would admit of much amplification; and in any instance in which the genuineness of a particular manuscript, or the authenticity of an ancient work were alleged to be questionable, every part of the evidence would require to be brought forward in all its details, and to be narrowly scrutinized.
CHAPTER V.
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.