CHAP. LXXX.
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
Origin of the Materials of Writing—Minute Writing—Titles of Books—Literary Labour and Perseverance—Curious Account of the Scarcity of Books—Celebrated Libraries—Book of Blunders—Curious Account of the Means of Intellectual Improvement in London.
| “Of all the pleasures, noble and refin’d, Which form the taste and cultivate the mind; In ev’ry realm where science darts its beam, From Zembla’s ice to Afric’s golden stream; From climes where Phœbus pours his orient ray, To the fair regions of declining day: The ‘feast of reason’ which from reading springs, To reas’ning man the highest solace brings. ’Tis books a lasting pleasure can supply, Charm while we live, and teach us how to die.” |
Origin of the Materials of Writing.—The most ancient mode of writing was on bricks, and on tables of stone; afterwards on plates of various materials, on ivory, on the bark of trees, and on their leaves.
Specimens of most of these modes of writing may be seen in the British Museum. No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a Nabob’s letter, on a piece of bark about two yards long, and richly ornamented with gold. No. 3207, is a book of Mexican hieroglyphics, painted on bark. In the same collection are various species, many from the Malabar coast, and other parts of the East. The latter writings are chiefly on leaves. The prophecies of the Sibyls were on leaves. There are several copies of Bibles written on palm-leaves, still preserved in various collections in Europe. The ancients, doubtless, wrote on any leaves they found adapted for the purpose. Hence the leaf of a book, as well as that of a tree, is derived.
In the book of Job, mention is made of writing on stone, and on sheets of lead. The law of Moses was written on stone. Hesiod’s works were written on leaden tables; lead was used for writing, and rolled up like a cylinder, as Pliny states. The laws of the Greeks were engraven on bronze tables. In the shepherd state, they wrote their songs with thorns and awls, on leather. The Icelanders wrote on walls; and Olaf, according to one of the sagas, built a large house, on the balks and spars of which he had engraven the history of his own and more ancient times; while another northern hero appears to have had nothing better than his own chair and bed, on which to perpetuate his own heroic acts. The Arabs took the shoulder-bones of sheep, on which they carved remarkable events with a knife, and after tying them with a string, they hung these chronicles up in their cabinets.
These early inventions led to the discovery of tablets of wood; and as cedar is incorruptible, from its bitterness, they chose this wood for cases or chests to preserve their most important writings. From this custom arises the celebrated expression of the ancients, when they meant to give the highest eulogium of an excellent work, et cedro digna locuti; that it was worthy to be written on cedar. These tablets were made of the trunks of trees; the use of them still exists, but in general they are made of other materials than wood. The same reason which led them to prefer the cedar to other trees, induced them to write on wax, which is incorruptible from its nature. Men generally used it to write their testaments, in order the better to preserve them: thus Juvenal says, Ceras implere capaces. This thin paste of wax was also spread on tablets of wood, that it might more easily admit of erasure.