Part 2

“OF INKS. Ink has not only been useful in all ages, but still continues absolutely necessary to the preservation and improvement of every art and science, and for conducting the ordinary transactions of life.

“Daily experience shows that the most common objects generally prove most useful and beneficial to mankind. The constant occasion we have for Ink evinces its convenience and utility. From the important benefits arising to society from its use, and the injuries individuals may suffer from the frauds of designing men in the abuse of this necessary article, it is to be wished that the legislature would frame some regulation to promote its improvement, and prevent knavery and avarice from making it instrumental to the accomplishment of any base purpose.

“Simple as the composition of Ink may be thought, and really is—it is a fact well known, that we have at present none equal in beauty and color to that used by the ancients; as will appear by an inspection of many of the manuscripts above quoted, especially those written in England in the times of the Saxons. What occasions so great a disparity? Does it arise from our ignorance, or from our want of materials? FROM NEITHER, _but from the negligence of the present race_; as very little attention would soon demonstrate that we want neither skill nor ingredients to make Ink as good now as at any former period.

“It is an object of the utmost importance that the Records of Parliament, the Decisions and Adjudications of the Courts of Justice, Conveyances from man to man, Wills, Testaments, and other Instruments which affect property, should be written with Ink of such durable quality as may best resist the destructive powers of time and the elements. The necessity of paying greater attention to this matter may be readily seen by comparing the Rolls and Records that have been written from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, with the writings we have remaining of various ages from the fifth to the twelfth century. Notwithstanding the superior antiquity of the latter, they are in excellent preservation; but we frequently find the former, though of more modern date, so much defaced that they are scarcely legible.

“Inks are of various sorts, as—encaustic or varnish, Indian ink, gold and silver, purple, black, red, green, and various other colors. There were also secret and sympathetic Inks.

“The Ink used by the ancients had nothing in common with ours, but the color and gum. Gall-nuts, copperas and gum make up the composition of our Ink; whereas soot, or ivory-black, was the chief ingredient in that of the ancients; so that very old charters might be suspected, if written with Ink entirely similar to what we use; but the most acute and delicate discernment is necessary in this matter; for some of the [black] Inks formerly used were liable to fade and decay, and are found to have turned red, yellow or pale. Those imperfections are however rare in manuscripts prior to the tenth century.

“There is a method of reviving the writing; but this expedient should not be hazarded, lest a suspicion of deceit may arise, and the support depended on [be] lost.

“GOLDEN Ink was used by various nations, as may be seen in several libraries, and in the archives of churches. SILVER Ink was also common in most countries. Red Ink, made of vermilion, cinnabar, or purple, is very frequently found in manuscripts; but none are found written entirely with ink of that color. The capital letters, in some, are made with a kind of varnish, which seems to be composed of vermilion and gum. Green Ink was rarely used in charters, but often in Latin manuscripts, especially in those of the latter ages. The guardians of the Greek emperors [or rather the Regents of the Empire] made use of it in their signatures, till the latter [the monarchs during minority] became of age. Blue or Yellow Ink was seldom used but in _manuscripts_.[!!!] The yellow has not been in use, as far as we can learn, for six hundred years.

“Metallic and other characters were sometimes burnished. Wax was used as a varnish by the Latins and Greeks, but much more by the latter, with whom it continued a long time. This covering or varnish was very frequent in the ninth century.

“COLOR. The color of Ink is of no great assistance in authenticating manuscripts and charters. There is in my library a long roll of parchments, at the head of which is a letter that was carried over the greatest part of England by two devout monks, requesting prayers for Lucia de Vere, Countess of Oxford, a pious lady, who died in 1199,—who had formed the house [or convent] of Henningham in Essex, and done many other acts of piety. This roll consists of many membranes or skins of parchment sewed together,—all of which, except the first, contain certificates from the different religious houses that the two monks had visited them, and that they had ordered prayers to be offered up for the Countess, and had entered her name on their bead-rolls. It is observable that time hath had very different effects on the various inks with which these certificates were written. Some are as fresh and black as if written yesterday; others are changed brown; and some are of a yellow hue. It may naturally be supposed that there is a great variety of handwritings upon this; but the fact is otherwise, for they may be reduced to three.

“It may be said in general, that BLACK ink of the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, at least among the Anglo-Saxons, preserves its original blackness [thereby meaning that its “form had not lost all its original _brightness_”] much better than that of succeeding ages,—not even excepting the sixteenth and seventeenth, in which it was frequently very bad. Pale ink very rarely occurs before the four last centuries. [Illustration]

“Peter Caniparius, Professor of Medicine at Venice, wrote a curious book concerning Ink, which is now scarce, though there is an edition of it printed in London, in 1660, quarto. The title is—_De Atramentis cujuscunque generis opus sanè novum. Hactenus à nemine promulgatum._ [A WORK ACTUALLY NEW, CONCERNING INKS OF EVERY KIND WHATSOEVER,—HITHERTO PUBLISHED BY NO ONE.] This work is divided into six parts. The _first_ treats generally of Inks made from PYRITES, [sulphurets of iron and copper,] stones and metals. The _second_ treats more particularly of Inks made from metals and CALXES. [Better say _calces_, or, to speak chemically, crystallized salts deprived of their “water of crystallization,” or carbonic acid, by the action of heat.]—The _third_ treats of Ink made from soots and vitriols.—The _fourth_ treats of the different kinds of Inks used by the _librarii_ or book-writers, [professional scribes or copyists of manuscripts before the invention of the art of Printing,] as well as by printers and engravers, and of staining (or writing upon) marble, stucco or scagliola, and of ENCAUSTIC modes of writing; as also of liquids for painting or coloring of leather, cloths made of linen or wool, and for restoring inks that have been defaced by time, as likewise many methods of effacing writing—restoring decayed paper—and of various modes of secret writing.—The _fifth_ part treats of Inks for writing, made in different countries, of various materials and colors,—as from gums, woods, the juice of plants, &c., and also of different kinds of varnishes.—The _sixth_ part treats of the various operations of extracting vitriol, and of its chemical uses.

“This work abounds with a great variety of philosophical, chemical and historical knowledge, and will give great entertainment to those who wish for information on this subject.

“Many curious particulars concerning Ink will be found in “_Weckerus de Secretis_.” (Printed at Basle, in 1612, octavo.)—This gentleman also gives receipts for making Inks of the color of Gold and Silver, composed as well with those materials as without them,—also, directions for making a variety of Inks for secret writing, and for defacing of [effacing] Inks. There are many marvelous particulars in this last work, which will not easily gain credit with the judicious part of mankind.”

We have chosen to give Mr. Astle’s paragraphs on this subject, entire, “pure and simple,” (with no corrections or alterations, except as to a few particulars in spelling, punctuation, &c.,) including some unnecessary formal verbiage,—instead of embodying his facts and observations in our own language. We shall do likewise with other authors whose books we use in this work, as the most effectual way of giving each of them due credit for their several discoveries and statements, and, at the same time, securing our own just claims to what we herein present as of our own discovery or production. But we will give no credit to a mere compiler or plagiarist.

Mr. Astle was keeper of the ancient Records of the English Government in the Tower of London, and thus enjoyed extraordinary facilities for ascertaining such facts, and making such observations as he furnishes in his very useful, interesting, and elegantly illustrated book. As to what he says (in his seventh paragraph) about the inexpediency of “hazarding” any effort to revive writing which has faded or become illegible, from fear of “a suspicion of deceit,”—the caution must of course be limited to cases where the words proposed to be restored to legibility have reference to some question of disputed title, or other matter in litigation or controversy. Mr. Astle would not have hesitated (any more than Angelo Mai) to use any possible process for the restoration of a _palimpsest_ manuscript of a long-lost work of Cicero or Livy, or of any document worth the labor and the time requisite to revive the letters or read them. Mr. Astle’s slight lapse of pen or mind in stating (eighth paragraph) that “Blue or yellow ink was seldom used except in _manuscripts_,” reminds us of Noah Webster’s reason, given in the first edition of his quarto dictionary, for the use of the word “Iland” instead of “Island,” viz., that the latter spelling was “found only in books.” Perhaps the venerable Mr. Astle would have been as much astonished to learn that he himself had always written manuscript, whenever he put pen to paper, as the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, in Moliere’s comedy, was to learn that he “had been speaking prose all his life.”

A comparatively recent author gives the following as the sum and substance of his knowledge on this division of the subject of our book.

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]

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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_.

Footnote 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._”

The last line proving, as Casley observes, that Ovid wrote upon a _roll_.

This author, not having been kind enough to translate Ovid for us, we are compelled to do it for him. This “Elegy” of the poet is addressed “To his Book;” and the following words contain the meaning of the four lines above quoted:

_Nor shall huckleberries stain [literally, VEIL] thee with purple juice: That color is not becoming to lamentations. Nor shall title (or “head-letter”) be marked with vermilion, or paper with cedar, Thou shalt carry neither white nor black horns on thy forehead (or front, or frontispiece)._

The word “huckleberries,” we have rightly spelled here. The dictionaries generally are wrong in spelling the word “whortleberry.” Huckleberry, or Hockleberry, is found in the kindred languages of Northern Europe.

Diplomas were seldom written in gold or colored inks; but some charters of the German Emperors are known, not only in gold, but on purple vellum; and Leukfeld mentions one of the year 912, ornamented also with figures; while several early English charters have gold initial letters, crosses, &c. The black ink that has kept its color best, in mediaeval manuscripts, is that used from the tenth to the thirteenth century. The signatures of the Eastern Emperors are frequently in red ink.

Colored inks were common in mediaeval manuscripts,—the red being most usual for titles, which has given rise to the term _Rubric_. The writers of books (that is, the copyists,) often appended their names to the end of the work, generally in ink of a different color from that of the body of the work, stating the time and place in which the work was executed.

To this may be added, with advantage, some instructive account of

WRITING INSTRUMENTS,

whose history is closely connected, to a great extent, with that of writing FLUIDS.

The Egyptian, and all other oriental and ancient scribes, who wrote upon stone, employed (of course) some instrument similar in character to the chisel of our modern tomb-stone cutters, or monument letterers. So with the Greeks and Romans, writing on surfaces of wax or wood, the instruments were the graphium, or glypheion, (the graver,) and the stilus, or caelum, all of steel or iron. When the use of a dark-colored liquid or _Ink_ was introduced, there arose a necessity for instruments of very different material, and great flexibility, in opposition to the unyielding rigidity of the tools previously employed. Then were invented the first implements properly called Pens, or really resembling what we so denominate and use. These were universally made of vegetable material, growing in the tubular form, of convenient size, as the _calamus_, _arundo_, _juncus_, and, in general terms, the smaller stems of various plants called “reeds” and “rushes” in English. We have already mentioned the uniform employment of the hair-pencil, or brush, by the Chinese, from the most ancient time of their writing. The quill, or feather-pen, was introduced during the fourth century.

We have alluded to the _palimpsest_ manuscripts. This is the term applied to parchments that have been twice written upon,—the first writing being effaced to make room for the second. During the period commonly called “the dark ages,” the monks and other scribes, copyists or book-makers, were in the habit of effacing the letters from old manuscripts, in order to make a clean surface for a new writing. In this way was caused the deplorable destruction of an immense and an inestimably valuable amount of ancient literature, of Greek and Roman history, poetry, eloquence and philosophy, merely to make room for mass-books, and other works of stupid superstition and mis-directed devotion, or, of scholastic theology and philosophy, now long ago universally condemned and exploded. Within the past and present generation, however, the learned world has been delighted by the surprising recovery of some of these long-lost treasures, through the skilful and ingenious labors of the deservedly famous Cardinal Angelo Mai, and others, whose researches in the libraries of Rome, Milan, Padua, Naples, Florence, and other cities, have resulted in the restoration of inestimably precious writings, thus partially obliterated or obscured.

Brande’s Dictionary of Literature, Science, and Art, gives a brief summary of the same general facts in the article “Palimpsest.”

The fullest and most elaborate exposition of the composition and manufacture of Ink which we have been able to find, however, is in the great French “Dictionnaire des Arts et Manufactures,” by an association of distinguished _savans_, in two volumes, imperial octavo, Paris, 1853, article, ENCRE.

But, of all articles and treatises on the subject, which we have examined, that in the English Penny Cyclopaedia has the merit of containing, if not the best and longest account, a very good and satisfactory one,—because it expresses all the essential facts in the fewest and best-chosen because perfectly intelligible words. As we do not attempt to furnish a text-book for ink-manufacturers, we do not transcribe in full, or translate, from these and other works of great value on this subject.

That modern inks do not resist the decomposing and destructive power of chemical agents (whether acids, alkalies, saline bodies or elements,) as well as the ancient inks, is the result of a necessity existing in their very composition and invention, and even in the use for which they were designed, and to which they are applied. A _dye_ (like modern ink) is the result of chemical action, and is therefore subject to chemical re-agents; yet, when well made, it is proof against mechanical action, such as washing, rubbing, and scraping; nor can it be removed from paper to which it is applied, without destroying that material, or rendering that part of it practically useless. But, on the other hand, the ancient inks, which resist all chemical processes, can be removed by mechanical action, such as has been named. If a new ink were compounded of the two, possessing the best properties of each, any writing executed with it could be effaced by the joint or successive action of mechanical and chemical applications.

It must be borne in mind that the ancient inks had one use for which writing ink is now never required; and that was in making books, or multiplying copies of manuscripts indefinitely for _general reading_, or _publication_. The invention and universal employment of the art of printing has wholly done away with that.

Of INDELIBLE INKS, or those used for marking fabrics of cotton, linen, &c., for the identification of ownership, it is not necessary to give any particular description. Their ordinary composition is very generally understood to be a solution of nitrate of silver, or some similar caustic, applied with a pen of proper material, to a portion of the surface of the cloth, which has been previously prepared by the absorption of a gummy or mucilaginous fluid dried upon it under pressure.

SYMPATHETIC INKS are fluids employed in coloring drawings made for parlor amusement, or the diversion of children and youth. As, for instance, a landscape drawn in ordinary colors with a wintry aspect, cloudy or sombre sky, snow on the ground, and leafless trees, if properly touched with sympathetic inks, will, at any time, when brought near a fire, or otherwise subjected to a certain degree of warmth, change to the hues of summer, the sky becoming of a clear blue, the trees in full foliage, and the turf rich with grass, each with its appropriate shade of verdure, as also flowers of their various natural colors, &c., according to the fancy of the artist, the whole disappearing as the picture grows cold. The chloride, the nitrate, the acetate, and the sulphate of cobalt, form sympathetic inks,—the first, blue, and (with the addition of nickel,) green; the second, red. Chloride of copper gives a gamboge yellow; bromide of copper, a fine rich brown.

Letters written with a solution of acetate of lead, are invisible until exposed to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen, which makes them distinct, with the lustrous greyish black of sulphuret of lead, the same substance which is called galena when it occurs as lead-ore. A weak infusion of galls or other vegetable astringent, will, if applied to paper in the form of letters, become legible when touched with any solution of iron. If written with a solution of ferro-cyanide of potash, letters will remain invisible until touched with a solution of sulphate of iron.

IMPORTANCE OF GOOD INK.

Astle speaks very impressively and justly on this point; and we contribute to this part of our subject by calling attention to facts almost daily occurring or brought to notice in this country, especially in the older cities and states, where town-records, parish-registers, and other documents of ancient date, and of high importance in history, chronology, and genealogy, (as well as in regard to the title and inheritance of estates,) are found obscured and obliterated, causing losses, public and private, that need but to be mentioned to be properly estimated.

In the appendix will be found a fac-simile of a sheet upon which various specimens of ink were thoroughly and fairly tested, which is a brief but emphatic demonstration of a difference of qualities by difference of results.

To show what can be done in the preservation of writing on material even frailer than such paper as we employ, we need but produce the specimen of Egyptian writing on papyrus, pronounced by Champollion to have been executed more than sixteen hundred (1600) years before the birth of Christ, yet still in preservation and legible, as may be seen by the representation we give of it.

This is undoubtedly as old as any specimen of phonetic characters or written letters (representing sounds, not ideas or objects,) extant, made by marking with a fluid upon any substance. There are inscriptions of letters upon stone, for which an earlier date of 4000 years B.C., is claimed with truth. But this is INK-writing, absolutely 3500 years old!