With those graceful chantries, which adorn most of our minsters, are closely connected the service books of the middle ages, for it was usual to insert in the blank spaces of the collects the names of the founders of the chantry chapels.
Indeed, the subtle way in which our old documents, of whatever class, interweave themselves with the annals of our mediæval buildings, whether as regards the general plan, the design of some sculptured porch, the pictured images on walls, or the many-coloured votive chapel, each and all illustrating a quaint legend or significant custom, is too numerous to indicate.
“Nor was all this labour spent in vain; their homes for centuries were in the silence of the sanctuary; their authors have mingled with the dust of the convent cemetery; over them have passed the rise and fall of the kingdoms of this world; but through them history has been transmitted with a continuity and fulness not to be found in any other form of art, or, it may be said in any form of literature.”[22]
“Mid all the light a happier age has brought,
We work not yet as our forefathers wrought.”
Shorthand in Church.
By William E. A. Axon, f.r.s.l.
When Job Everardt published in the year 1658, his “Epitome of Stenographie,” he had certainly no intention of minimising the value of his art, but, on the contrary, was quite ready to magnify the office of the shorthand writer. The engraved title-page is ornamented by eleven emblematical pictures, and stenography is declared to be “Swifter than the swift of foot” (Amos ii. 15); “Swifter than a post” (Job ix. 25); “Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” (Job vii. 20); “Swifter than waters” (Job xxiv. 18); “Swifter than clouds” (Isaiah xix. 1); “Swifter than ships” (Job ix. 26); “Swifter than horses” (Jer. iv. 13); “Swifter than dromedaries” (Jer. ii. 23); “Swifter than roes” (1 Chron. xii. 8); “Swifter than leopards” (Heb. i. 8); “Swifter than eagles” (2 Sam. i. 23). It may be remarked in passing that the worthy Everardt consistently spells than then in the text to each of these emblems. We have left to the last the picture which holds the place of honour. Here we see a worthy divine, robed in a black gown, set off with white collars and cuffs, and with his head covered by a furred skull cap. He stands in a low pulpit, his hands rest on the comfortable cushion, which is unencumbered either by book or MS. Opposite to him, and occupying the whole of a comfortable form or very wide chair, is a stenographer. He wears his hat, as was often customary in church during the seventeenth century; he has impressive white hands; he has not taken off his cloak, but on a fold of it allows a book to rest, in which, with an impossible pen, he is taking down the sermon, and stares with fixed gaze as the divine asserts “My tongue is as the pen of a swift writer,” and seems almost inclined to dispute the assertion that any tongue could keep pace with his nimble stylus.
It must be confessed that the early stenographers—to confine our attention to them—were not at all in the habit of under-valuing their art. Here is what this same Everardt, “dropping into poetry” like Silas Wegg, has to say in a triple acrostic:—