From Calamus to Quill.
It is most interesting to trace the evolution of the pen, beginning with the calamus and stilus—the reed and erasing bodkin—and ending with a fountain-pen of the most improved make. In ancient days great care was taken in the selection of the choicest reeds, the best-cured parchment, and the daintiest waxen tablets. Egypt grew the best reeds, though they were also found in Armenia, Persia, and Italy. The modern Turks and Moors prize the Persian reeds above all others, splitting the points in the same manner as our grandfathers prepared their goose-quills. The oldest account known respecting quills is found in a work of St. Isidore's, who died in 636. Alcuinus, who lived in England, speaks of his pen, so the familiar article must have been in use almost as long as the art of writing was known in the country. Perhaps steel pens would have been more popular when first introduced if all had known that the quills were pulled from the living geese!
Dr. Warner told his stationer that with one quill pen, old when he took it up, he wrote an "ecclesiastical history," two volumes folio, and a "dissertation on the Book of Common Prayer," both first and final draughts. Byron wrote the "Bride of Abydos" in one night, without once mending his quill, while Andrew Borde, physician to Henry VIII., and the original "Merry Andrew," wrote a book of nearly three hundred pages, 12mo., in the same manner. Camden wrote of the quill with which he composed the Britannia,
"With one sole pen I wrote this book,
Made of a gray goose quill;
A pen it was when I it took,
And a pen I leave it still."
Launcelot Claymore.
What Shakespeare Studied when at School.
Mr. William J. Rolfe, the Shakespearian student, has written most entertainingly of the Avon bard's school days. "The training in an English free day school in the time of Elizabeth," he writes, "depended much on the attainments of the master, and these varied greatly, bad teachers being the rule and good ones the exception. In many towns the office of schoolmaster was conferred on 'an ancient citizen of no great learning.' Sometimes a quack conjuring doctor had the position, like Pinch in the Comedy of Errors." What did William study in the grammar-school? Not much except arithmetic and Latin, with perhaps a little Greek and a mere smattering of other branches.
The Latin grammar used was certainly Lily's, the standard manual of the time, as long before and after. In The Taming of the Shrew (I., 1, 167) a passage from Terence is quoted in the modified form in which it appears in this grammar.
This fact, slight as it is, seems to have its bearing on the Baconian controversy. "Can we imagine," asks Mr. Rolfe, "the sage of St. Albans, familiar as he was with classical literature, going to his old Latin grammar for a quotation from Terence, and not to the original works of that famous playwright?"
We often hear people speak of "good old times," as if present times were worse. But good old school times of the sort described here were certainly not better than present times.