In the first volume of the Every-Day Book, page 1086, I found an account of some small writing, executed by Peter Bales, which Mr. D’Israeli presumed to have been the whole bible written so small, that it might be put in an English walnut no bigger than a hen’s egg. “The nut holdeth the book; there are as many leaves in this little book as in the great bible, and as much written in one of the little leaves, as a great leaf of the bible.”—There is likewise an account in the same pages of the “Iliad” having been written so small that it might be put in a nut-shell; which is nothing near so much as the above.
I have lately seen written within the compass of a new penny piece, with the naked eye, and with a common clarified pen, the lord’s prayer, the creed, the ten commandments, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth collects after Trinity, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c., the name of the writer, place of abode, nearest market town, county, day of the month and date of the year, all in words at length, and with the whole of the capital letters and stops belonging thereto, the commandments being all numbered. It was written by, and is in the possession of, Mr. John Parker of Wingerworth, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire: the writing bears date September 10, 1823. This piece of writing, I find, upon calculation, to be considerably smaller than either of the before-mentioned pieces. My calculation is as follows:—
A moderate sized egg will hold a book one inch and three quarters by one inch and three-eighths. Bibles have from about sixty to eighty lines in a column; I have not seen more. In this ingenious display of fine penmanship, there are eighty lines in one inch, and two half-eighths of an inch, which in one inch and three quarters, (the length of the bible,) is one hundred and six lines, which would contain one-third more matter than the bibles with eighty lines in a column; and one line of this writing, one inch and two-half eighths of an inch in length, (which is the sixteenth of an inch less in bread than the small bible,) is equal to two lines from one column of the great bible—for example.
Isaiah. Chap. XXIV.—Two lines of verse 20, the bible having seventy-nine lines in a column:—
“and the transgression thereof shall be heavy
upon it, and it shall fall, and not rise again.”
Ezekiel, Chap. XXX.—Two lines of verse 12, the bible having sixty-three lines in a column:—
“and I will make the Land waste, and all that
is therein, by the hand of strangers.”
One line of Mr. Parker’s writing being part of the seventh collect after Trinity:—
“good things; graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, now”—
Another line being part of the ninth and tenth commandments:—