WRITING-INKS.

Dark-colored liquids were used to stain letters previously engraved on some hard substance, long before they were made to flow in the calamus or pen for forming them on a smooth surface; and the Chinese made their “Indian Ink” in the same manner as now, 1120 years before the Christian Era; but, only used it, at that time, to blacken incised characters.[[1]] Ink was termed by the ancient Latin authors atramentum scriborium,[[2]] or librarium, to distinguish it from atramentum sutorium or calchantum. It was made of the soot of resin, or pounded charcoal, and other substances, mixed with gum, and not, like ours, of vitriol, gall-nuts, alum, &c. The earliest positive mention of ink is perhaps the passage in Jeremiah, in the Vulgate, “Ego scribebam in volumine, atramento.”[[3]]

[1]. Here we might add, without fear of contradiction, that Ink is still extensively used to “blacken characters,” without regard to the depth of the incision.

[2]. The specimen of the English language which we quote, is not faultless; and the Latin is execrable. There is no such word as scriborium in any language, ancient or modern. The Romans called writing-ink atramentum scriptorum.

[3]. This is a very paltry piece of pedantry. Why could not this author (who shows that he does not understand Latin,) give us the text in English? The passage is in Jeremiah, chap. XXXVI, verse 18: “I wrote them with Ink in a book.” The only other references in the Bible to Ink, are the following: 2 Corinthians, III, 3: “written not with Ink, but the spirit.” 2 John, XII: “I would write with paper and Ink.” 3 John, XIII: “I had many things to write, but I will not with Ink.” Ezekiel, IX, 2: “with a writer’s ink-horn by his side.”

Gold liquids, and also silver, purple, red, green, and blue inks, were eventually used in manuscripts after the fourth century,—red and gold having been employed much earlier. St. Jerome speaks of rich decorations, which must have been executed with colored inks; but, before his time, Ovid alludes not only to the purple charta, made use of for fine books, which were also tinged with an oil drawn from cedar-wood, to preserve them, but, also to titles written in red ink, which were the first kind of illuminations. The passage occurs in his first elegy, “Ad Librum:”

“Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo;

Non est conveniens luctibus ille color.

Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur.

Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras.”